Absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco's ghost hovers over Kevin Mandel's A New Television Arrives, Finally, a drearily one-dimensional new comedy about the detrimental impact that television has on our lives.
The piece opens with a character known as Man (Bryan Fenkart) waiting for a new television set to be delivered. Having reached a breaking point in his work life, he's spent over a week at home pretending to be sick, and during this time his old set has conked out. A television arrives, but it's anthropomorphized. Dressed in a magenta suit (from costumer Rebecca Lustig), sporting a goatee, and cheerfully garrulous, Television (Tom Pelphrey, who alternates performances with Victor Villar-Houser) perches on an empty rolling TV stand. As he ricochets from subject to subject, Television captures Man's attention and revitalizes his ennui-filled viewer. Woman (Kate Russell), Man's coolly distant fiancée, is equally captivated, and soon they are willing to do anything for this new fixture in their apartment (a convincing urban interior from set designer Chad Brinkman).
Mandel's instincts for the piece are good. Man and Woman talk in fragmented sentences (think Ionesco's The Bald Soprano), their language skills clearly deteriorating. Television's monologues are grandiose, abstract, and yet filled comfortingly with buzzwords and catch phrases. Unfortunately, after establishing the television's almost Mephistophelean presence, neither the script nor Kevin Kittle's high-octane staging builds to new levels. Voices are raised and Television's pronouncements become threateningly insistent -- but to no real purpose. Even the piece's climax and denouement only serve to further underscore Mandel's premise that television has a deleterious effect on our lives. Pelphrey's engaging presence and bombastic delivery entrance early on, but even his seemingly boundless energy and Fenkart's equally fervent -- in a nerdy sort of way -- performance never manage to propel this absurdist satire beyond its one joke.
Presented by Planet Earth Productions
at Theatre 54 @ Shetler Studios, 244 W. 54th St., 12th floor, NYC.
Sept. 10-30. Schedule varies
(800) 838-3006 or www.brownpapertickets.com.