THEATER - FRINGE 2006 ENCORE: "Broken Hands"

Shrouded in a darkness, a man with bandages around his hands stands on a bridge, peering off into the dark and unforgiving waters of the Thames. His brother, a well-groomed shyster, climbs up to join him, holding onto a gun as if for dear life. He appears out of the shadows like a ghost, and fades back into them like a ghost, which is for the best, for he is a ghost, and the man on the bridge, a boxer, is haunted. Moby Pomerance's striking drama, Broken Hands, is haunting, too: Cory Grant and Eric Miller have such a profound and nuanced relationship that we hate to see anything bad happen to it. And though Pomerance puts the end of the play at the beginning, he handles the theatrical jumps between past and present so effortlessly that one forgets, at times, where it's all going. The credit doesn't belong to anyone in particular: the actors make us forget that we're watching a play, the smooth writing helps the actors forget that they're acting, and Marc Weitz's smooth direction helps everybody forget that there's a world outside the theater. Jay Ryan also deserves credit for his elegant palette of lighting (and his efficiently simple one-piece set): after all, the play only won the Fringe awards for Best Actor (Grant) and Outstanding Playwriting (which it shares with The Catharsis of Pathos), and everybody involved in this show deserves a round of applause.

Read on at [New Theater Corps]
Photo Courtesy/Neilson Barnard