The Killing Room Visits the Post-Apocalyptic Hospital

Playwright Daniel Keene does some Beckett-y Greeks

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

What do you get when you combine two grizzled tyrants, a sinister doctor, and ghoulish offspring chained to brick walls? I'm not really sure. And if you go see Daniel Keene's The Killing Room, you may not be, either.

Kayam Rajaram

Probably not a metaphor for Obama-care

Details

The Killing Room
By Daniel Keene
Teatro Circulo
64 East 4th Street
866-811-4111, oneyearlease.org

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The play, directed by Nick Flint, is billed as a version of the myth of Atreus and Thyestes, Greek lore's most vengeful brothers—but it seems to owe more (a lot more) to Beckett. Some exchanges are practically word-for-word quotations. The premise, as far as it's discernible, is that Ed (David Deblinger) and Cy (Christopher Baker) were once kings, but after some unexplained apocalypse (Endgame much?), they're shivering in hospital beds, hooked up to IV drips streaming endless bags of blood. They dread the return of their families. I'm guessing that's because one of them ate his kids in the original myth—but it's hard to tell, because Keene fixates on gory imagery at the expense of storytelling.

In the more amusing scenes, the brothers snipe and snarl, attempting to sabotage each other's IVs or poking at the putrid mush served up for lunch. But even here, Ed and Cy seem like a knockoff Hamm and Clov. Keene stuffs so many secondhand tropes into one show that the results are as murky as the unidentifiable goo on the duo's trays.