Yankee Tavern
Yankee Tavern
By Steven Dietz
Directed by Anne Hering
Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, Orlando FL</strong>
As small helpless creatures awash in a world we barely understand, a model of this heartless universe helps explain away all the bad things. Religion and conspiracy theories fill that role, each posits a large, expansive power with a unified goal and strategy, and each requires you to accept outlandish facts without proof. Faith not only moves mountains, it fills hours and hours of air time just as readily. In post 9-11 NYC, the Yankee Tavern is on its last legs, soon to become a glass tower of commerce and investment. Meanwhile, it houses a few lost souls like Ray (Jim Ireland) a crazed and nearly vagrant skeptic with a George Carlin delivery and an encyclopedic knowledge of what might or might not be true. He drinks free courtesy of the owner, Adam (Zack Robidas) whose father left him this derelict building. Adams studies international political theory, which prepares you to either be a spy or sweep the floor at the UN. His girl friend Janet (Katherine Skelton) is getting skeptical about their upcoming wedding. Adam spends way too much time with his sexy professor and disappears on trips to places that she can’t trace. A guy named Palmer (Tom Nowicki) drops in one day to share a beer with an invisible friend and a maze of conspiracies from JFK to 9-11 to the wedding industry fill the room. Its heady stuff and the answers are as elusive as the questions themselves. To quote Pilate “What is truth?”
Starting as a wacky, character driven comedy, Yankee Tavern twists and turns and ultimately heads down a creepy path with no safe end in sight for anyone. Ireland’s frenetic delivery and non-stop verbal barrage keeps the audience laughing, but the laughing slows down and evaporates as we see Adam become more than a bright student and more of a cog in a mystery machine. Skelton’s Janet might love him, but she wants “The truth” as much as any woman, but it’s not in this deck of marked cards. She clearly will NOT be happy in a CIA marriage. Keeping a moderately calm center is Nowicki, who might be a rouge agent or Company Plant. Either way, he’s man with the discipline to order two rolling Rocks, an only drink one. Take THAT Chuck Colson!
Paranoia is big business, and it can be as big a business as you let it get in your mind. There will always be evil forces and murky plans, and they may or may not line up with your best interests. A truly great Conspiracy allows you to play the small patriot yelling the truth on top of a stormy mountain, just like and Old Testament prophet. It’s a crappy job, but it gets attention, and that’s a big draw for more than a few people. Whether you believe the aliens have taken over the Trilaterals and the Ark of the Covenant was stolen form the Pentagon in the fire, Yankee Tavern is a high energy race through the fun house mirrors of the America zeitgeist. Wear dark glasses and only pay cash for the tickets – it’s no secret Orlando Shakespeare uses the same computer operating system as a certain large “Defense” company in town. Just a word to the wise…
For more information on Orlando Shakespeare Theater, visit http://www.orlandoshakes.org
For more information of conspiracies…you probably don’t want to go there. Seriously.</em>
