Thom Pain (based on nothing)
by Will Eno
Thom Pain is not really based on nothing. Will Eno’s one-man monologue follows a theater tradition that treats narrative and language like musical improvisation; it is a nonsensical, sardonic romp into childhood, yearning, love, disappointment and loss, performed to perfection by downtown theater veteran James Urbaniak, star of American Splendor.
There has been so much recent theater traversing similar ground to better effect, but it has remained largely unheralded in the New York performance sphere—a reading of Beckett’s Worstward Ho by Christopher Yeatman at the Sideshow Gallery last year and Young Jean Lee’s recent Pullman, WA at P.S. 122 come to mind. In Pullman, Lee weaves lyrical wordplay, emotional stream-of-consciousness rambling within the interactions of three characters whose ability to play off of one another’s psychological obsessions give it depth and a sense of lyrical structure that Eno’s Pain lacks.
Thom Pain’s wordplay loses steam, repeats then betrays itself as lyrical trickery (once you’ve gotten the beauty of the trick). Stories about a young boy whose dog died and a woman “Thom” loved and lost are riveting on first recitation but lose sexiness with repetition. Urbaniak pretty much has an Obie locked down—he breaks into tears at one point, injecting warmth, but then jettisons it when he chats with an audience member inexplicably dragged onstage. Let’s call it psychological improvisation, he makes you care about the language and its tunneling into little black holes, but it’s not enough to save a play that ultimately runs out of gas, a last-ditch plea for empathy and enlightenment.
DR2 Theater, 103 E. 15th St,
There has been so much recent theater traversing similar ground to better effect, but it has remained largely unheralded in the New York performance sphere—a reading of Beckett’s Worstward Ho by Christopher Yeatman at the Sideshow Gallery last year and Young Jean Lee’s recent Pullman, WA at P.S. 122 come to mind. In Pullman, Lee weaves lyrical wordplay, emotional stream-of-consciousness rambling within the interactions of three characters whose ability to play off of one another’s psychological obsessions give it depth and a sense of lyrical structure that Eno’s Pain lacks.
Thom Pain’s wordplay loses steam, repeats then betrays itself as lyrical trickery (once you’ve gotten the beauty of the trick). Stories about a young boy whose dog died and a woman “Thom” loved and lost are riveting on first recitation but lose sexiness with repetition. Urbaniak pretty much has an Obie locked down—he breaks into tears at one point, injecting warmth, but then jettisons it when he chats with an audience member inexplicably dragged onstage. Let’s call it psychological improvisation, he makes you care about the language and its tunneling into little black holes, but it’s not enough to save a play that ultimately runs out of gas, a last-ditch plea for empathy and enlightenment.
DR2 Theater, 103 E. 15th St,
