EDGE Philadelphia

Pig Iron Theater’s Chekhov Lizardbrain, by Robert Quillen Camp, somehow mixes The Three Sisters and the writings of autistic author Temple Grandin into a heady, absurdist romp. With sublime physical performances by Pig Iron’s troupe, it comes across as zany chamber theater full of mystery. Happily, though, it is not obscure: when James Sugg steps out of a royal blue skyscape through lush red-velvet curtains and starts his schizoid performance as Dmitri you immediately get it.

We go from the stories of Dmitri’s psychosis to the Chekhovian landscape on a center ring circus set with actors in handle-bar moustaches, bowlers and eventually tails over the period skivvies. Once inside his head, we meet Sascha (the primal brain), Pyotr (the dog brain) and Nicholai (the evolved brain).

The play was an unlikely sold out hit at its first incarnation at the German Society in Northern Liberties in Philly and in its expanded New York run last year it was one of the New York Times 10 best plays of 2008, and Sugg’s performance snagged an Obie Award.

"The performance juggles ideas about Chekhov, about playmaking, about what the theater’s for, mixing them with bigger matters: love, honesty, friendship, and justice; our relation to nature, to each other, ultimately to ourselves. Nothing’s insisted on and little is stated overtly; the show’s almost aggressively un-didactic. As with Chekhov, the things we understand from it hang in the atmosphere, articulated but unspoken, engulfing the characters," wrote critic Michael Feingold in The Village Voice.

Pig Iron’s director Dan Rothenberg is reviving the New York version at the Arts Bank in Philadelphia this week. The director worked with playwright Camp to fine-tune his play for this production.

"Lots more material than what was first presented in Philly. We researched more on the three brain theory to our connection to the Three Sisters," he said during a tech rehearsal this week. For this version, actor Chad Lindsay is performing the role created by Goeffe Sobelle who played the Sascha, who cannot move on from the grief of losing his mother and now must face leaving their home.

"After Philly we were playing our cards too close to the chest. We wanted to articulate what was really central to the story Dmitri’s story. We develop our plays over years sometimes and we worked with the writer Robert Quilan Camp in getting deeper into the themes. It is still a preposterous story, but we have made it clearer.

Rothenberg said that the reactions to Lizardbrain have been all over the place. You never know how it’s going to go. Some people laugh all the way through and some people cry all the way through."

The show returns to New York in January.


In Philadelphia Chekhov Lizardbrain, plays December 10-13, 2009, Arts Bank at the University of the Arts, Broad and South Streets, Philadelphia, PA
In New York City it plays January 7-17, 2010
At the Under The Radar Festival, CSV Cultural Center, 107 Suffolk Street, New York, NY.
For more information visit the Pig Iron Theatre Company’s website