play review

(Top) Linda Hammell, Joel Mitchell. (Foreground) Steven O'Brien, Julia Garlotte.
photo by Lynch Travis
It’s uncanny that just as I’m being asked to explain nearly everything to my almost-3-year-old on a daily basis - reading storybooks and watching “Sesame Street” are acts now punctuated every 30 seconds by the questions, “Why?” and “What is that?” - I see Edward Albee’s “Seascape,” now at the Blackbird Theatre, for the first time on a stage.
For the Pulitzer Prize-winning play focuses an aging couple, Charlie (Joel Mitchell) and Nancy (Linda Rabin Hammell), who, after discussing their past and future life together while on the beach one day, are confronted by two human-sized lizards, Lesley (Steven Alan O’Brien) and Sarah (Julia Garlotte), who speak English, but have a large number of gaps in their knowledge, since they just emerged from a life in the water.
So Charlie and Nancy fumble to explain handshakes, love, clothing, why we differentiate between arms and legs, and photos (among other things). Defining so much of the small stuff of daily life - as I’ve realized while chatting with my curious toddler - necessarily forces you to think about their inherent absurdity.
More after the jump…