CLOSE UP SPACE at MTC's City Center Stage 1

(Seen December 2011)


Director Leigh Silverman who this season did such excellent work with CH'ING-LISH, is unable to do anything to save this muddled, confusing, and silly new play by Molly Smith Metzler.  And the presence of David Hyde Pierce as an unhappy, obsessive book editor, with Rosie Perez as an unlikely demanding, prima donna author, doesn't add any substance or reality to the proceedings.

"Close-up space" is a proofreader's and editor's symbol, and the title turns out to be prophetic in a way, presaging what might have happened if a dramaturg had edited and pruned and compressed this intermission-less and meandering play down into a short skit.

The entire cast plays everything so broadly, that they merely add to the ridiculousness and the unbelievability of the situations and the characters. It seems like unintentional 'theatre of the absurd'.