Feeling Sorry for Roman Polanski
Theatre Asylum as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival
Reviewed by
Steven Leigh Morris, L.A. Weekly
June 22, 2010
Chicago import, Sideway Theater and Taco Dog Productions production of Sue Cargill's amusing comedy about victims and the people who love them. Amid kitchen banter between a gossipy wife, Myrna (Danielle Fink), and her forlorn husband, Bink (Michael Whitney), Bink reveals how his energetic performance of singing a telegram in a gorilla suit induced a fatal seizure in the almost 90-year-old recipient of his entertainment. As Bink faces the loss of his job and some guilt, even his own wife starts to subtly blame him. She cannot help but side with victims; this includes an impassioned and slightly goofy defense of her favorite director, Roman Polanski, attributing his alleged molestation of a 13-year-old girl to his harrowing upbringing during the Holocaust, and the trauma of the Sharon Tate murders. The droll humor spins in circles for a bit too long under Michael A. Stock's direction, until Bink chooses to visit the deceased woman's nephew (Michael Whitney), her only living relative, at her funeral. "I've decided not to sue you or your company," is supposed to be good news from the nephew, leading instead to Bink's questioning the nephew as to why, exactly, he chose to hire a guy in a gorilla suit to deliver a greeting to a woman so obviously frail—a reasonable question that shifts responsibility back to where it would belong in a rational world. But Cargill's world, in her intriguing play with competent performances, is far from rational. 
