Tribe Productions Presents

AFTERMATH

At the 2015 Planet Connections Theatre Festivity
Paradise Factory Downstairs Theater
64 East 4th Street
NY NY

17, 20, 24, 27 June 2015

Written and directed by J.C. Svec

Featuring Emma Asher, Elizabeth Bowman, Jolie Curran, Audrey Lane, Edward Rosini, Evey Salehi, Rachel Sobel, and Ross Turkington

AFTERMATH is not a play, but a series of short plays with an interstitial piece that runs in between each short. Other than all being about dying and right after, they don’t seem to have anything in common, and it is a rather uneven combination as some of the pieces are more successful than others.

The Cemetery Spirits are a woman we can see and a woman we cannot see. It is never explained either to the audience or the characters why one is invisible, and we never really learn anything about the women so it is never clear what their dramatic arc is.

Far more effective were Visitation and The Deluxe Package. The former is about a selfish, but not bad man (Edward Rosini) who has died and comes to realize that the practice of prayers for the dead used to be what helped folks out of purgatory and into heaven, but since that practice has died out (no pun intended), purgatory is where everyone seems to get stuck for good.

The Deluxe Package is a terrific satire about where modern society’s obsession with advertising has led. A dying person can get some extra cash at the end by selling their funeral space to advertisers (open caskets=more revenue!). Rachel Sobel is particularly good in this sketch as the synthetically sympathetic saleswoman.

A portion of the proceeds from AFTERMATH benefit The National Disaster Search Dog Foundation.

- Jean Tait -