What The Sparrow Said (Fringe Festival 2011)
by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on August 27, 2011
Kevin Mannering and Matthew Michael Hurley (Photographer: Alona Fogel)
Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me? Wait a minute now – what? Just what is Danny Mitarotondo’s new play, What the Sparrow Said, at CSV Latea, trying to say? Or is it really trying not to say anything? The language has certainly been put through a crafty shredder, stripping it of any natural clarity, eliptically hinting that there is more going on than is apparent, morphing into indigestible poetry, and flashily playing at nonsense while preventing any speaker from actually finishing a sentence. The actors rattle off their lines as if they were in some over-paced 1930s screwball comedy, overlapping sentences in a manner that defies clear communication and challenges listener comprehension. Strain as you will to grasp what is being said, it is all but hopeless. And when this difficulty is pointedly compounded by the decision to stage separate scenes on top of one another, and having characters in different scenes talking simultaneously so that your attention is split in the rising din, and you are forced to abandon at least one set of exchanges… well; really? Yeah, I get life can be confusing; chaotic even. Yes, and life can be annoying. Very annoying. Verisimilitude, however, is definitely not a part of this playwright’s vocabulary. Absurdism? Perhaps.
