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The Crazy Locomotive

nytheatre.com review by Richard Hinojosa
August 15, 2005

It’s been a while since I’ve felt as exhilarated as I did at the climax of The Crazy Locomotive. I was pulled on board from the get-go and held in my seat by the G-forces created by the acceleration of the action. Fringers who are looking for a wild ride should earmark this one as a must see.The performers are already on stage as you enter the space. In characters that you won’t see in the play, they deliver a quirky postmodern pre-show complete with Bushisms, bad Polish jokes, and operatic commercial slogans.At the top of the show proper, we are introduced to a fireman (a burly guy who shovels coal into a steam engine) and his young fiancee, Julia. Shortly after that the train’s engineer and his domineering wife crash onto the stage. The engineer orders the fireman to stoke the engine and prepare to go at full throttle. Their intellectual banter on the nature of art/reality/existence and the effects of mechanization on society progressively becomes more surreal and frenzied as the train increases speed. The characters become truly alive as they race at breakneck speed toward their certain death. Subconscious desires are revealed as they relish in the creation of their own reality. At the end, as all the characters lay dead, we are given the epilogue in the form of an excellent short film courtesy of Carrie Holt de Lama.The Crazy Locomotive is a parody taken to extremes that expresses Polish avant-garde playwright Stanislaw Witkiewicz’s distaste for mechanization and modern art by exploiting them in his mockery of them. His characters want to be liberated from a mundane reality and they actively pursue this goal, living by the motto of “action not contemplation.” Likewise, Witkiewicz pursues his agenda in no uncertain terms, attacking his subject matter directly with some truly brilliant one-liners.The ensemble has no fear. They move and shout with exuberance. They speak their lines and grope each other (and themselves) with deep conviction. Carl Wisniewski and John Gray are demigods of the alternate reality they create as the engineer and the fireman respectively. Nicole Wiesner’s presence as Julia draws the eye like an imminent train wreck. John Kahara, Carolyn Shoemaker and Beata Pilch round out this daring ensemble.Pilch also serves as the production’s director. Her vision of beautifully controlled chaos is clear and her actors unflinchingly adhere to her stylistic choices. Indeed, I believe Witkiewicz himself would be pleased with this production. One note, the space is full of uncurtained windows so I would suggest seeing it at night so the lighting is more effective.This show comes to FringeNYC from Chicago's Trap Door Theatre.