by Andrew Irons
june 4, 2005 - june 25, 2005
The Ohio Theater

Time Out NY Says:
Husband and wife Andrew Irons and Jessica Davis-Irons form a perfect team in Little Suckers, a moving mythopoetic tragedy of thwarted happiness doubling as a cubist portrait of a fractured American family. Margie Stokley and Ryan Bronz play the latchkey children of an oddball single mom named Morrie (Purcell), who is a sort of Anne Sexton type: brilliant, gorgeous and suicidal. Isolated and unsupervised, the kids go crazy in their own ways, eventually becoming stuck in a childhood that they physically outgrew years ago. A bid for happiness by Morrie seems too good to be true when she meets a stuttering, sensitive neighbor named Bucklin (Aulisi) and the two marry. This being a tragedy, her good fortune is short-lived.

Irons's script manages to be daringly innovative while resurrecting narrative standbys: a bit of Oedipus, a pair of twins, and metaphors that embrace storms, darkness and leeches (yes, leeches) to justify the play's title. The set design (by Meganne George) and staging are some of the most gorgeous and efficient I have seen Off-Off Broadway in a while, and the ensemble gives warm and truthful performances even in the face of unbearable bleakness. As the Prospero orchestrating these elements, Davis-Irons proves a force to be reckoned with. (At one point, she creates a jaw-dropping hurricane both beautiful and terrifying in its power to convince). The family portrayed in Little Suckers may be wildly dysfunctional, but the one that produced it is working just fine.
-Trav S.D.
Performances Thursday – Saturday throug June 25, 2005.
$15 through Smarttix
www.smarttix.com
or 212-868-4444




PHOTOS!

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