Photo Source: James Hunting
On the surface, Clay McLeod Chapman's idea isn't a bad one. The Minotaur myth—in which King Minos doesn't sacrifice the gift of a bull from the gods and so must contend with his bewitched wife bearing the bull's child (the minotaur), which , hidden in a labyrinth, devours 14 children a year—is so reliant on beef that to place it in the context of "Fast Food Nation" seems inspired.
But neither Chapman nor director Ianthe Demos have done the necessary work. Minos may now own Minos Beef, a fast-food restaurant, but he's still king of Crete, while all his employees mysteriously sound like refugees from HBO's deep-fried "True Blood." There's also a whiny man dressed as the company's mascot and a midwife who seems to have been transported directly from "Medea" into Chapman's topsy-turvy, multiaccented world. The choppy scenes and welter of accents may be an intentional choice to keep the piece contemporary yet timeless, but the result feels akin to watching several different plays spliced together with no explanation. And Chapman shows a somewhat lascivious interest in the myth's bestiality rather than in its real takeaway: Theseus bravely killing the minotaur with the help of a map from the king's daughter Ariadne and a ball of string. Instead, we get blueprints for devices in which Minos' wife could conceivably have adequate relations with the bull, despite much ado being made over Minos' ability to preserve and freeze the bull's sperm.
The cast, somewhat shockingly, mostly rises above the fray and din. Danny Bernardy is appropriately roguish as Theseus, though his final scene suffers from sheer absurdity; Gregory Waller is appealingly angry and hubristic as Minos; and Sarah-Jane Casey does well as Mino's boozy wife, Pasiphaë. But whatever emotional heft "Teaser Cow" achieves comes courtesy of Christina Bennett Lind as Ariadne. Frustrated and furious that her minotaur half-brother gets all the attention while she works the counter at Minos Beef, Lind is pitch-perfect as a sullen teen with every reason to be sullen.
"Teaser Cow," however, has every reason to be sent, if not to the slaughterhouse, then at least to Chapman's computer for another round or three of rewrites.
Presented by One Year Lease Theater Company at Teatro CÃrculo, 64 E. Fourth St., NYC. Jan. 14–Feb. 4. Weds.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. (212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, www.theatermania.com, or www.oneyearlease.org.