Briana Pozner, Paul Bomba
Bitten by a Zebra Photography
by: Sandi Durell
A play by the Athena Theatre Group is the story of two fractured people who have an overwhelming impulse to jump on the tracks before an on-coming train. Maybe they should have at the very beginning of this simplistic, unfathomable nonsense that is being given a debut run at 59e59 Theaters.
Paul Bomba, the playwright, plays the title character Jeff who meets his female counterpart, Lisa (Briana Pozner), on a station platform where they both are having urges. Hers are also more of a sexual kind, nymphomaniac that she turns out to be, where she gets her highs lying underneath trains as they pass over her, and more physical jollies having sex with her newly attracted male Jeff, who is suffering from the loss of a fiancé who died of cancer, as she teaches him the thrills of dodging the third rail. Lisa is an eruption waiting to happen and does as she inveigles Jeff into her crazy world. Poor Jeff would be susceptible to anything and anyone at this given moment in time.
Paralleling these two lovebirds are Jeff’s roommate, Martin (Curran Connor), the most believable of the group, trying to have an affair with the nearby friend-neighbor Jennifer (Veronique Ory), a student, who keeps popping into their apartment whenever her boyfriend drops out of her action. Martin is the steady type – – lawyer, interested in helping people, grounded.
The set, by Julia Noulin-Merat, is as good as it can be given the small staging area and contains a mini couch, not exactly large enough for a grownup to lie upon, and a tubular long piece that goes up and down to represent a pole to hold on to on the subway platform. There’s also Charles Forster’s black light projections of the innards of the tunnels below ground.
The entire production, under the direction of Benjamin Kamine, seems like a throw away that gives the impression why bother.
www.59e59.org 212 279-4200
