David Hurst takes a look at Hurricane Diane:
For the first 75 minutes of its 90-minute, intermission-less, running time, Madeleine George's Hurricane Diane, currently onstage at New York Theatre Workshop and co-produced with Women's Project Theater, is a breezy, frequently hilarious, romp. It's a modern-day reimagining of Euripides' The Bacchae, wherein Dionysus is now Diane, "a lesbian, separatist, permaculture gardener from Vermont whose mission is restoring the Earth to its natural state — and gathering acolytes — in a well-appointed, suburban cul-de-sac in Red Bank, New Jersey." Unfortunately, once Diane has gathered her acolytes and the bacchanal has begun, playwright George doesn't know how to end the piece and the last 15 minutes go off the proverbial cliff in spectacular fashion. How spectacular? At the performance this writer attended, the ending was met with a stunned silence that lasted several seconds before one lone person in the back of the house (a member of the production staff perhaps?) started applauding. For a play that had its world premiere two years ago at the Two River Theater and has had workshops since, such a confusing, ill-defined ending is unaccountable. . . . |
