Howard Miller takes a look at The Nosebleed at Lincoln Center:
What starts out looking like an evening of quirky sketch comedy gradually transforms into a touching, tender, and, for many in the audience, a highly relatable personal tale in Aya Ogawa's The Nosebleed, opening tonight at the Claire Tow Theater at Lincoln Center.
We are told at the top that one of the subjects is Ogawa's feeling of personal failure, but we are never shown any such feelings.
There's intense guilt about cutting ties with Ogawa's father, yet the author remains enraged that the father was impossible to live with and an utter failure as a human being. The possibility that there is nothing to feel guilty about is never hinted at, and possible explanations for the father's bizarre behavior are never considered.
It's only 75 minutes and yet is padded. The Bachelorette scenes aren't worth the time it takes to set them up, and there's a complete rendition of "My Way" when the point is made fully in the first thirty seconds.
It does have moments of interesting dramatic invention, so I look forward to Ogawa's next work; but my companion and I both found the lack of self-awareness here tedious.
