Scared of the Dark

On looking into the mirror and being terrified at what you see

Comments (0) By Brandon K. Thorp Thursday, Jul 5 2007

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George Schiavone

Thomas Allen Durkin is a wee and hurtable thing.

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Written by Will Eno. With Todd Allen Durkin. Directed by Richard Jay Simon.

With Todd Allen Durkin

Through July 15th at The Mosaic Theatre, The American Heritage Center For The Arts, 12200 West Broward Blvd, #3121, Plantation, 33325. Call 954-577-8243 or visit www.MosaicTheatre.com.

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He tells us a joke: ¨A horse walks into a bar, and the barkeep says Why the long face?´ The horse says, Well, I´ve got AIDS...´¨ He teases us with a raffle. He demands things of the stage´s lighting rig and is ignored. And he digresses -- endless digressions, ending in rapture or terror or both, long soliloquies that never conclude but expire, Durkin´s synapses hitting dead ends, brick walls, falling into silences that are quickly filled with noise, which itself resolves into stories that decay into digressions, which work themselves into frenzies before hitting their own walls, and then . . .

Thom Pain is a scared little animal, and everybody who watches him for seventy minutes will begin thinking much the same thing about the people sitting next to them in the theater. Afterwards, when the lights come up, people should talk to one another, freed suddenly to inquire after the small and tragic moments that dog the lives of perfect strangers. This is not what happened the night I went, and I was disappointed. That´s why Thom Pain is, after all, only theater. That´s also why we need it.