Also this issue: On The Nose Clowning around, Pig Iron style. -Juliet Fletcher Leah Stein Dance Co. -Debra Auspitz Breaking the Mold -Nikki Roszko Choosing My Religion -Steve Cohen Don Juan Delightful -Toby Zinman

May 9-15, 2002

theater

House Party

we are family: Paul McElwee (center) and his uninvited guests in Azuka Theatre Collectiveâs Friends.

by Toby Zinman

FriendsThrough May 26, Azuka Theatre Collective at 2nd Stage at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St., 215-733-0255

Discount Kafka.

Ionesco for Very Young Children. East Misses West by a Mile. Non Sequiturs Duke It Out with Cliches -- and lose!

I spent some of this interminable play writing stuff like that to keep my annoyance level below the point of tooth-gnashing.

Friends was written by Kobo Abe, the Japanese author best known for his novel, Women in the Dunes. It is about a guy who lives alone. A family of three generations -- eight people -- appear at his apartment door one night. They force their way in and take up residence there. They eat his food. They cash his paychecks. They speak New Age drivel. They sing New Age drivel. Their self-proclaimed mission is to rescue him from loneliness, a kind of home invasion in disguise as an intervention.

I'm not sure what the object of the play's satiric attack is, although it probably has something to do with over-crowded living conditions in Tokyo, and with cultural over-politeness which makes it impossible for people to assert themselves lest they be thought rude, and with a society of fake-serenity that is, beneath a gracious surface, greedy and manipulative and unscrupulous. Or so I gather. It certainly doesn't seem to work in English or have much to do with our brand of urban paranoia. The central conflict in Friends between the individual and the collective is not an American conflict. The nightmare of being killed by kindness is not an American nightmare.

Directed by Greg Giovanni, using an opaque and stilted translation by Donald Keene, the best that can be said for the production is Amanda Schoonover's cute performance as the bratty innocent Granddaughter, and John Fidler's cute performance as the aphorism-spouting Grandmother. Joe Koroly's set is far better than this play deserves.