Acadia Theatre Company Obtains Exclusive Canadian Rights to a Maritime Premiere!
In a world where Canadian voters let Stephen Harper get away with proroguing parliament, refusing to repatriate Omar Khadr, and the U.S. is still recovering from an administration that declined to define anything this side of organ failure as torture, it’s a relief to have the opportunity to laugh at a decade-dominating viewpoint that likes guns in the hands of angry and irrational people, torture as a first-resort means of interrogation, and raging paranoia as an accepted worldview.
WHY TORTURE IS WRONG, AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM puts a gun to the head of politics – from “Freedom Friesâ€Â to the feelings of foetuses. Set against the backdrop of America’s homeland “insecurityâ€, everything is suspect. A young woman wakes up to discover she drunkenly married a man named Zamir, who claims to be Irish. Is he a terrorist? Could her father be involved in a secret shadow government? Why is she suddenly hearing voices? Durang piles the absurdities of family life, torture, and the war on terror into a bomb and detonates it. The fallout is something like sanity, and this script goes a long way toward disinfecting some long-festering political wounds.
The theatre is what lets a playwright like Mr. Durang heighten absurd, vicious human behaviour into detoxifying Absurdity and — for a few silly, happy moments at the end— create an artificial world in which all wrongs are righted, and mutually respectful couples go dancing into the dark.
“Christopher Durang, our Poet Laureate of the Absurd, has written a smashing new play.†– NY Observer
“You may laugh yourself silly at this silly symphony whose every movement is a scherzo.†-Bloomberg News
“Durang’s funniest play!â€Â -NY Times
“. . .one of my favourites!â€Â -LA Theatre Review
Tickets: $12, Students/Seniors: $10
Available at the door, or the box office in the Acadia Athletics Complex 542-5500
