My overall impression
A man in his pajamas pads into the living room and meticulously folds onto the frame of his armchair, settling in front of the tv, the back of which is to us. The audience is gathered about three sides of the thrust stage watching him watching his television. In this voyueristic moment, we get to imagine what it might be like for a box to be projecting unblinkingly at a man on a couch who is sedentary by a bowl of popcorn, in fuzzy slippers click click clicking on the remote. We are privy to a show of private minute reactions. The evening between himself, his stuffed monkey, and the tv are going pleasantly enough until the television is seized by a sentient voice who breaks the intimacy of his solitary habit.
This one-man show quickly accelerates as the television calls down a lightning storm whose electric shock seizes the man’s living room and the tv hijacks his body, usurping control of the remote to make him enact an unpredictable barrage of scenes at its switch to comical juxtapositions. Actor and creator Jeff Gardner’s protean physical virtuoso makes the mind reel as he delivers a pastiche of pantomime perfectly choreographed to schizophrenic sound clips.
The play is strangely titled Kill Your Television. The character seems happy enough in his habits that we feel rather bad for the torturous antics the tv puts him through. He took the most subdued delights in its sample of offerings, while the tv, as if harboring a tectonic core of resentment for its own immobility, unleashes a fury upon its captive when the controls are turned. A television is made to entertain, it would appear to have the most ideal viewer and care taker in this loyal man.
Part Pleasantville and part Truman Show, it implicates the audience, who have likewise chosen to spend an evening being entertained while committing themselves to nothing beyond sitting in a chair munching on buttery popcorn. [spoilers in this review continued at:
http://okapicrux.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/kill-your-television-fringe-theater-review/]
