What begins with a bad mind reading
performance, and almost immediately evolves into a wrongful imprisonment by
a U.S. government plagued by terrorism, quickly turns into an SM, brutal,
serio-comic examination of foreign and domestic policy that gets lost and
found and lost and found in the maelstrom of torture, violence, sex and
manipulation. Exploiting a climate in which unchecked xenophobia can quickly
go horribly and viciously awry, AMERICAN MAGIC exists as a testimony
to the way in which the post-9/11 United States has perhaps gone on the
offensive and become less the land of the free and more the home of the
brave.
The cast keeps up with the frenetic pace
of Matthew Wilder’s direction, and with the tone of Gil Kofman’s dark
script, but everyone would have been well served if a quarter hour or so had
been lobbed off, or at least tightened up. However, as teamed with the moody
lighting, an urban apocalypse of a set, and the dominatrix wardrobe afforded
Ms. Kane as a character simply called Woman, at least the look and tone are
always right on.
AMERICAN MAGIC,
with its dark current and bleak message will not be everyone’s cup of tea,
but it does at least have a sense of humor about itself. I neither loved nor
hated this play, but my best advice about whether or not to attend would
have to be "suit yourself."
- Kessa De Santis -
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