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Sir Isaac Newton was wrong. Gravity isn't the only law of the land. In Lauren Yee's 90-minute, surrealistic piece, love also grounds people. And the un-loved float away.
Oliver Sacks wrote *The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, a bestseller about his case studies as a neurologist: among them a man who couldn't remember his life after a certain point; autistic savants who could add vast sums of numbers; and a woman out of touch with various parts of her body.
A Man, His Wife, and His Hat could induce Saks-like symptoms in the audience. Comfortable notions of time and space undergo a neurological warp.
The History Channel has programs about future history. You can store memories in glass jars (the actual voices, even the smells). On the Day of the Dead, the departed pay a visit (though some are slower to arrive than others). And if people go missing, send them a letter. It'll find them every time.
Before he retired, Hetchman was the best hat-maker in town. Now he couch potatoes in a lumpy armchair, crunches puffy Cheetos, and watches a dinky TV. His wife of 60 years cleans up around him. She knows he loves his favorite hat more than her - so much, in fact, that he's forgotten her name. The hat disappears. Then the wife.
Elsewhere a woman, called Voice, reads Hetchman's story from pieces of paper dropping out of the sky. She's engaged to be married, but her fiancee starts to float. There are also two walls that talk and claim to be all-knowing, and a Golem, an artificial being from Jewish folklore that may or may not mean harm.
It's fun, heady stuff, but the payoffs don't fulfill the promise of the inventions.
Part of the problem, for most of the evening Hetchman's a negative centerpiece. He's the stereotypical Numb Husband, a dullard deluxe and insensitive beyond the max. Even though Mark C. Petrich gives him humorous ticks and quirks at Moxie, the mostly one-note character weighs down the potential for buoyancy around him.
Robin Christ as the nameless wife and Fred Harlow as Meckel, a friend, bookend Hetchman like tragic and comic masks, the wife slowly admitting her plight to herself, the friend outwardly happy. One of the best scenes: a flashback where the wife and Meckel - who could have been soulmates - almost bond.
Victoria Petrovich's set combines reality and fantasy (you can almost smell Hetchman's chair and can sympathize with Meckel when he enters wearing a clothespin on his nose). Sherrice Kelly's lights and projections add to the aura. As do director Janet Hayatshahi and a cast that gives its best shot with lightweight characters and a predictable, Meckel-tinted ending.
Sir Isaac Newton was wrong. Gravity isn't the only law of the land. In Lauren Yee's 90-minute, surrealistic piece, love also grounds people. And the un-loved float away.
Oliver Sacks wrote *The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, a bestseller about his case studies as a neurologist: among them a man who couldn't remember his life after a certain point; autistic savants who could add vast sums of numbers; and a woman out of touch with various parts of her body.
A Man, His Wife, and His Hat could induce Saks-like symptoms in the audience. Comfortable notions of time and space undergo a neurological warp.
The History Channel has programs about future history. You can store memories in glass jars (the actual voices, even the smells). On the Day of the Dead, the departed pay a visit (though some are slower to arrive than others). And if people go missing, send them a letter. It'll find them every time.
Before he retired, Hetchman was the best hat-maker in town. Now he couch potatoes in a lumpy armchair, crunches puffy Cheetos, and watches a dinky TV. His wife of 60 years cleans up around him. She knows he loves his favorite hat more than her - so much, in fact, that he's forgotten her name. The hat disappears. Then the wife.
Elsewhere a woman, called Voice, reads Hetchman's story from pieces of paper dropping out of the sky. She's engaged to be married, but her fiancee starts to float. There are also two walls that talk and claim to be all-knowing, and a Golem, an artificial being from Jewish folklore that may or may not mean harm.
It's fun, heady stuff, but the payoffs don't fulfill the promise of the inventions.
Part of the problem, for most of the evening Hetchman's a negative centerpiece. He's the stereotypical Numb Husband, a dullard deluxe and insensitive beyond the max. Even though Mark C. Petrich gives him humorous ticks and quirks at Moxie, the mostly one-note character weighs down the potential for buoyancy around him.
Robin Christ as the nameless wife and Fred Harlow as Meckel, a friend, bookend Hetchman like tragic and comic masks, the wife slowly admitting her plight to herself, the friend outwardly happy. One of the best scenes: a flashback where the wife and Meckel - who could have been soulmates - almost bond.
Victoria Petrovich's set combines reality and fantasy (you can almost smell Hetchman's chair and can sympathize with Meckel when he enters wearing a clothespin on his nose). Sherrice Kelly's lights and projections add to the aura. As do director Janet Hayatshahi and a cast that gives its best shot with lightweight characters and a predictable, Meckel-tinted ending.