Wanda sits in her Kmart top, reading O magazine and watching game shows on TV as her husband, an author of children's books, is out buying a polo shirt that won't make him look like Bozo the Clown. He's in an insane tizzy when he returns, however, sure that there's a plot to make him buy one that is too big so that at the next barbecue they host for friends, the long front tail of the shirt will catch fire on the grill and he'll have to jump into the pool to survive the flames. The problem is that he can't swim. Wanda sighs, continuing to thumb through her magazine. "We don't have any friends, Russell, and we don't have a pool." She's used to such tirades.
Pigs and Bugs is Ibsen on crack. Suburban life isn't all PTA and shopping malls in Paul Zimmerman's amazingly twisted and delectable play, perhaps one of the darkest—and funniest—to hit Los Angeles stages in many months. Enrico Colantoni and Tara Karsian are hilarious as Russell and his long-suffering Wanda, as are Christine Estabrook as Wanda's agoraphobic sister, Harriet (about whom Russell concludes, "Agoraphobia wouldn't be so bad; you could get a lot of stuff done around the house"), and Anna Perilo as Harriet's almost normal, college-bound daughter, Brenda (just give her a few years). Chris Fields' direction is suitably nonstop, putting these four courageous, trusting actors through their paces at such breakneck speed that one must wonder whether they go home and sleep until showtime the following night. Colantoni, adept at instant twists and turns of emotion, is especially memorable as he reads one of Russell's stories about Cream Puff the Friendly Cloud, whose best buddy, Cutie Pie the Curious Cocker Spaniel, dies a horrible death in a tar pit.
Act One features only two-person confrontations between these bizarre and likeable family members, but when the four find themselves together in Harriet's home for the Act Two ("Did you bring any polo shirts, Brenda," asks Russell, "or any other weapons?") the fur begins to fly—and we're not talking about Cutie Pie's. It begins with Wanda and Harriet discussing The Wonders of the Barnyard on the National Geographic Channel and coming to the conclusion that the solution for Harriet's agoraphobia might be that everyone should just stay home; it ends with a frantic, sweaty, outrageously farcical concluding scene with all three older relatives trying to decide who's out to kill whom.
This is a welcome world premiere by a fresh, new playwright—a guy who, to paraphrase his own script, gives us all a piece of his mind that we'll never want to return.
"Pigs and Bugs," presented by the Echo Theatre Company at the McCadden Place Theatre, 1157 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood. Thu.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 3 p.m. Feb. 14-Mar. 14. $15. (800) 413-8669.