I get to write this phrase so infrequently: Double Feature is
a really fun night of theater. “Fun” as in surprising, goofy, creative,
weird—all things that Imago long perfected with their popular
show FROGZ, and that they offer here with a slightly more adult
twist (read: a healthy dose of sex and a whole lot of f-bombs). The two
one-acts that comprise the double feature are both written and directed
by Imago’s Jerry Mouawad, and while the writing is probably the weakest
note in the production, it’s easy to overlook a bit of structural
sloppiness because everything else going on is so, well,
fun.
Each audience member is given two tickets, and instructed that the
first ticket is for their seat on the “black” side, the second for
their seat on the “white” side. What this means is immediately and
dizzily apparent: The stage is divided straight down the middle into a
white half and a black half. Why? Who cares, it’s an awesome idea.
The first play, Serial Killer Parents, starts with a great
conceit: A magician and his assistant/wife essentially reprise
Waiting for Godot as a magic act, forgetting where they’ve been
from one moment to the next, performing magic tricks by rote because
it’s just, well, what they do. Performers Mouawad and Carol Triffle,
Imago’s co-artistic directors, are a pleasure to watch, particularly
Triffle as the languid, deadpan assistant. I could’ve done without the
twist that these two are parents of a serial killer who is awaiting
execution—it made for a little too much information, a little too
much of the desperate plottiness that often characterizes one acts.
The second show (the white half!) is based on and named for the
Philip K. Dick story The Father-Thing, about an alien who
impersonates a man by stealing his skin. The winning conceit here is
that it’s presented like a movie, with a narrator explaining camera
angles and shots, and a model dollhouse representing the exterior of
the house. A wife notices that her husband has developed a foul stench,
and their children soon realize that their father is no longer their
father at all. Panic and chaos and stylized fight scenes ensue.
Mouawad is much better writing dialogue than plot—on a
frame-by-frame basis, The Father-Thing is casually profane and
very funny, but the big picture is muddled and crammed with far more
information than is strictly necessary. It would be nice to see the
editing process on both of these scripts go one step farther—with
some streamlining, maximum fun potential could be achieved.