Lyle Kessler’s Orphansis a surreal nightmare about two brothers — orphans. One (Tom Sturridge) is a severely retarded man whose manner of speaking presents an IQ of about 58, and the physicality of a chimpanzee who bounds around the set, jumping from railing to window ledge to couch. The other brother, Ben Foster, a criminal, brings home a drunk, Alec Baldwin, another orphan, planning to rob him. Unfortunately, Foster speaks so rapidly that much of what he says is lost or obfuscated. My companion and I (neither of us with much hearing loss) kept wondering what was going on.
Pinter-Shminter -- enough with the mystery. So captive becomes captor. Uh huh.
Baldwin is fine, but when one third of the cast speaks in a blur . . . I believe you have two obligations on the stage: first: to communicate; second: to entertain. Director Daniel Sullivan should know this. This production fails the first, and is only entertaining when Sturridge chimps it up. Pass.
