Patrick Gabridge’s political send-up, BLINDERS (@ Flat Earth
Theatre through June 25th) features an outsider candidate for
President (a scientific twinship, actually) who appeals to the lowest common
denominator, promising to eradicate poverty by imprisoning poor people and to silence
dissenters by walling them up. Believe it or not, BLINDERS was written when
Bill, not Hillary, was running for President, at a time when Gabridge thought
such comic ideas were too outlandish ever to come true. Let that be a lesson to
all.
Director Korinne T. Ritchey’s intense, well oiled production for
Flat Earth features nine on-the-money actors, led by Kimberly McClure as the
one courageous woman in America
who won’t be sold a bill of goods. As good as McClure is, the most fun in
BLINDERS comes from the double, triple and quadruple casting, with hilarious
performances from Glen Moore as a mad scientist, a dimwitted mailman, a nasty
policeman and a conniving Southern Senator (Is there any other kind?) and from
Marge Dunn as an airheaded shopaholic, a crazy psych patient, an ecstatic
whiner and an operative named Fat Dominic.
Alas, the law of unintended consequences after the massacre
in Orlando
early this morning kept me from finding gunshots (intended as outrageous
satire) amusing.
There is no satire in gunfire anymore. As one of the
survivors sadly said, “There is no going back.”