NY Review: 'All the Indifferent Children of the Earth'

Little did Rosencrantz, Hamlet's poor doomed college bud, know, when he said that he was faring "as the indifferent children of the earth," that he would inspire not one but two pieces of absurdist theater, the most recent of which is Eric Bland's occasionally smooth-tongued but mostly self-absorbed play "All the Indifferent Children of the Earth." It explores, albeit in a vague, freeform way, the lives, acting careers, and existences of several emo egomaniacs in Williamsburg—practically the modern day Elsinore, come to think of it.

Exhaustingly subtitled "a play about existing now," the piece opens strongly, with the four cast members (who use their own names) creating and holding a tableaux of tricky yoga poses set to bouncy music. As writer, director, and choreographer of the show's playful dance numbers, Bland lets his stream of consciousness run loose from there on out, and the waters can be rough. The bulk of the show consists of extended "scenes" of "dialogue" among "characters" so gorged with irony and self-awareness that, yes, all three of those words must be put in quotation marks.

Certainly the most entertaining of these "scenes" involve Hollis Witherspoon, Sarah Dahlen, and Kathleen Heverin, who each tackle Bland's loopy, at times death-obsessed script with admirable spunk. Allusions to popular culture, from Facebook to Dizzy Gillespie, pepper these discussions, which are sometimes paired with limply executed stylized movements. But these less-than-peppy motions actually work in context: They are the "indifferent" children after all.

Periodically, audiences are rewarded with graceful video poems written by Bland and directed by Asa Gauen. Bland's text fares far better within the confines of these segments, which are spoken with dry clarity in voiceover, mostly by cast member Daniel Piper Kublick. In one gorgeous sequence, Witherspoon daintily steps on colored bricks along a sidewalk while Kublick says, "After you are dead, I will probably get sick from grieving all day and night while trying to get up early and sit in coffee shops, which for me, of course, are latte shops."

Presented by the Old Kent Road Theater and the Brick Theater at the Brick Theater, 575 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn, N.Y. Feb. 17–March 3. Thu.–Sat., 8 p.m. (212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, www.theatermania.com, or www.bricktheater.com.