Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Addressing modern day anxieties: Abe Koogler’s STAFF MEAL and S. Asher Gelman’s SCARLETT DREAMS

• By drediman
• May 14, 2024
• No Comments

Currently Off-Broadway, you’ll be able to catch a pair of world premiere plays that, in their respective ways, deal with modern day anxieties. Here is my assessment on these new works.

SCARLETT DREAMS
Greenwich House Theater
Through May 26

Over the past year or so, I’ve come across plays that have dealt with the threat of Artificial Intelligence on theater-makers — namely, Annie Dorsen’s Prometheus Firebringer at TFANA and Steve Cosson’s AI-generated musical Artificial Flavors for The Civilians. Taking a broader and less philosophical approach over at Greenwich House Theatre is Scarlett Dreams (SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED), S. Asher Gelman’s follow-up to his long-running Off-Broadway play Afterglow. But unlike in Dorsen and Cosson’s decidedly heady concoctions, Gelman instead takes a more commercial science fiction/thriller route in expounding the dangers of an AI endgame. Even if the play — which tells the story of an AI program (initially developed for personal fitness) that evolves into an increasingly controlling and sinister presence in society — ultimately registers as a relatively predictable, bordering on pulpy cautionary tale, Scarlett Dreams does make some well-articulated arguments both for and against the use of AI. Gelman’s production is also well produced (kudos to the design team all around) and performed by an attractive and committed cast, featuring Andrew Keenan-Bolger in a performance that could easily be seen as an audition for the role of Seymour in the successful Little Shop of Horrors revival playing Uptown.

STAFF MEAL
Playwrights Horizons
Through May 24

Taking a starkly different path in expressing the anxieties of living in the present world is Staff Meal (RECOMMENDED), Abe Koogler’s new play now playing at Playwrights Horizons’ intimate Peter Jay Sharp Theater. Abstract and surreal, Koogler’s work in essence depicts an off-kilter post-pandemic world that’s fast losing any sense of meaning, and therefore reason for being. In a piece strung together by absurdist associations, the playwright presents a series of existential scenes in which communication is unreliable, world structures are a sham, meals are inexplicably drawn out, and art (particularly theater) no longer has the ability to feed the soul as it should. And as the somewhat rambling play approaches its conclusion, an increasingly menacing and apocalyptic mood takes over, suggesting a world on the fast track to diminishment. Suffice to say, Staff Meal stays far clear from the kind of prescriptive, accessible theatrical formulas employed by plays like the aforementioned Scarlett’s Dream. Which is not to say that there is no entertainment value to be found in Koogler’s play — in fact, I found it haunting and often found myself chuckling at its dark, offbeat sense of humor. Director Morgan Green gives the play a stealthily shape-shifting, mystery-laden staging, in the process mustering some memorably deadpan performances from downtown regulars such as Susannah Flood, Greg Keller, and Erin Markey.