Poor Man’s Amos
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Poor Man’s Amos could have been a disaster: one man, Clint Sheffer, is the playwright, one of the show’s two performers, and Bruised Orange’s artistic director. Instead it’s a terrific evening, impeccably paced and balanced between humor and pathos. One of the show’s many strengths is that it doesn’t go in any expected direction. It begins like a poor man’s Zoo Story, with a random hostile encounter between two strangers. Later it resembles David Mamet’s work, complete with snatches of unlooked-for erudition as well as profane, inarticulate speeches that communicate more than the characters realize or intend. The play’s ending, however, is wholly original, reflecting a sensibility more humane than either Albee’s or Mamet’s.
Two men headed in opposite directions meet on facing el platforms. Reggie is an artist trying desperately to maintain his street cred (“I prefer ‘painter,’ it doesn’t raise so many false expectations,” he says), strutting his south-side working-class roots and masking his adoration of fellow art student Chrissie with crude language and displays of a portrait he’s painted of her vagina. At first blush Seth seems more intellectual: wrapped in a trench coat, he’s grading papers from the class he’s teaching on dream interpretation when Reggie interrupts him. But over the course of the play the two men trade status, once Reggie publishes a graphic novel and Seth loses his job. They also trade, and ultimately share, an obsession with Chrissie, who’s never seen. Though her actions, especially her choice of bedmate, drive the plot, the play is less about her than about the men’s idea of her. Roughly a Madonna/whore, she also seems more complicated and textured than that thanks to Sheffer’s writing. Whatever else they might be doing, Reggie and Seth are always hauling around the concept of Chrissie, and the weight of that baggage gives the play its title: Amos was the biblical prophet whose name means “burden bearer.”
Where: Oracle Productions, 3809 N. Broadway
