Angel Feud

With heavenly hosts, Marisol and Living End take two different looks at the afterlife

Comments (0) By Elaine Liner Thursday, Feb 24 2005

Things get really grim after that. Amid much pointless screaming and badly executed stage fighting, sad little Marisol wanders through a trash-strewn, plague-ridden area of The Bronx looking for her missing friend (Christie Shane) whose creepy brother Lenny (Chad Gowen Spear, overacting like he's being paid by the shriek) is some kind of psychotic stalker. They blurt cryptic nonsense: "The Visigoths are climbing the city walls" and "In Van Cortland Park perverts are fondling snowmen." Somebody says, "Go ahead and kill yourselves with your crack and your promiscuity and your homo-anal intercourse."

A Nazi goosesteps onto the set, splashes gasoline on a homeless guy and sets him on fire. (If only they'd done that with the script.) Marisol has to kiss a guy with no face. Lenny, spouting references to Taxi Driver, appears in a dress with a swollen belly and goes through painful and very noisy mock-labor to give birth to a bloody doll that they spend 20 minutes burying. Between explosions, the guardian angel comes back in full battle gear, carrying an assault weapon.

Life is relentless pain in Marisol, with Elizabeth Sankarsingh (foreground) and Octavia Y. Thomas. So is the play.

Details

continues through February 26 at the Irving Arts Center. Call 972-252-2787.

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It's like watching Left Behind: Live.

On and on it goes, dialogue dribbling out in curdled gobs of absurd commentaries on credit card companies, the publishing industry, environmentalists and anything and everything to do with New York City post-September 11. Playwright Jose Rivera is one sick puppy. He needs to stop typing and re-up his Prozac prescription. Life, even in The Bronx, just isn't this terrible. Marisol makes 'Night, Mother look like L'il Abner. As entertainment it ranks somewhere alongside deep vein thrombosis.