Green Investigates Corrupt Interplanetary Elections!

Metropolitan Playhouse hosts Chris Harcum's whirlwind solo sci-fi show

Comments (0) By Miriam Felton-Dansky Wednesday, Feb 16 2011

So our hero, Green, is a lonely human on futuristic Planet Mumbai Forest, where homo sapiens aren’t welcome. Arrested for performing his trademark “physical poetry” (don’t ask), Green is turned over to the mutant Commander Crush, who discovers that the hapless mortal is a talented mimic, and—rescuing Green from the dreaded Oxygen Farms—assigns him to the security team of Atlas Anderson, a candidate in a corrupt interplanetary election. Green impersonates Anderson (literally: they swap bodies) during debates with a sinister rival from Planet Shanghai Bank. Fast forward a few light years, throw in the intervention of a good-hearted prisoner, and a threatened galactic corporate takeover is foiled, then Green set free.

Maryanne Ventrice

Hapless mortal faces universe.

Details

Green
Written and performed by Chris Harcum
Metropolitan Playhouse
220A East 4th Street
212-995-5302, metropolitanplayhouse.org

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Got that? I didn’t even mention the gay Scottish mercenary. If you’re struggling, picture this: Chris Harcum plays all these roles and more in his new solo show, Green—bopping around a bare stage to embody aliens, humans, and robots. It’s like watching the excited antics of a kid cooped up in his room too long: first cute, then bafflingly bizarre.

Harcum gestures to current events—immigration, globalization—but hurtles through too many plot convolutions to provoke any insights. He’s an agile performer, traversing imaginary solar systems with gusto, but he needs rescuing from the outer limits of sci-fi inanity.