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REVIEW: Omnium Gatherum

by David Finkle

Theater Mania

During the anxious hours and days after September 11, 2001, millions of distraught world citizens ruminated obsessively over what they could do to alleviate widespread physical and psychological pains. For playwrights, the option was obvious and probably unstoppable: Write a play. The first to show up was Anne Nelson's The Guys, which The Flea Theater's Jim Simpson commissioned at a dinner party. Then there was a lull. John Guare's one-act Woman at a Threshold, Beckoning bowed at this year's EST spring marathon, but there hasn't been much else.

Now there's evidence that the gestation period for at least some 9/11 dramas was just about two years -- the time it takes for dramatists to compose a work and then find a home for it. No less than three plays on the disturbing subject will have opened by the time September bows out. The first of them, Jonathan Bell's Portraits, is a disappointing series of reality-based but apparently fictional monologues; the third, Craig Wright's Recent Tragic Events remains to be assessed.

The second is Omnium Gatherum, which Theresa Rebeck and Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros found themselves compelled to construct. It's the second demonstration so far during this busy seven-day period that when it comes to cogent dramatic reply, playwrights can't just have their hearts in the right place. Also required is the kind of imaginative thought that Nelson and Guare brought to bear in their pieces -- deeply personal, even offbeat, answers to global anguish...

For full article view:

http://www.theatermania.com/new-york-city-theater/reviews/09-2003/omnium-gatherum_3928.html


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