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The Food Chain

Nicky Silver's comedy "The Food Chain" is the current offering at IU's intimate T-300 in a production directed by Terry Brino-Dean. Silver's play is a pretty wild farce, but not of the door opening and closing variety. It's mostly a word farce. "The Food Chain" was often less a play, than a set of slightly theatrical standups. Quickly let me say that they were very well written and delivered and the audience laughed a lot.

Lauren Sharpe played Amanda, a poet who's entire output consists of one untitled number after another. Her current piece is "Untitled No. 300 something." Lauren's husband, Ford, of just three weeks went out for a walk and that was two weeks ago. She's calling a help phone line. Lauren is long on self examination and verbal wanderings. She punctuated her half hour of frequently funny conversation by occasionally remarking, "but I've strayed."

If Lauren is a case for the books, her counselor is even more of a prize. Kelly Ann Ford was Bea the help line volunteer who's six hours of training has qualified her to handle anything. And who's life of being a querulous gossip has added whatever other qualifications she might lack. Bea should have been calling in herself and Kelly Ann Ford made a real sort of "Coffee Talk" lady of Bea.

Our next duo in "The Food Chain" were Serge the slim quiet runway model played by Brendan Donaldson and the incredibly obnoxious and overweight Otto played by Arian Moayed. Serge is quietly handsome and a little slow, but boasts "abdominals as hard a formica." Otto was padded out to a Chris Farley figure and he was darned near as winsomely irritating. He was a mile a minute talker and eater. In fact he came supplied with his own collection of doughnuts, Fritoes, Ding Dongs, Oreos and cheese balls. Otto might be down near the bottom of the food chain, but he was intent on eating his way up.

Jared Porter's set design uses a turntable for intermission less set changes. The interiors are children of eighties apartment design and expressonism. They certainly fit Nicky Silver's skewed pentagon of characters. There is not a right angle to be seen. In fact, I found myself continually checking to see that the floor was indeed just a plain horizontal surface.

Now you know already that Bea, the phone lady, is fat Otto's mother, that the abandoned Lauren and Otto went to high school together, and that the missing husband Ford, played in monosyllables by Robert Baer, is somehow mixed up with Serge the model. But, the unraveling of the plot is really only a small part of our interest, almost just an excuse, to get some funny characters with some very funny monologues on stage.

IU's T-300 production of Nicky Silver's "The Food Chain" plays each evening this week and there is a two o'clock matinee on Saturday.

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