Countdown to Nowhere
What Roger Hedden promised and what he didn't deliver at Florida Stage
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Maybe that much affection is good, and maybe it's not, but I'll tell you what — it's a shame that this gifted, funny, humane playwright and his able cast have extended their talents to a play that glosses over its own best question. What forces could have caused two children of decent parents to waste away their lives as reactionary combatants in a sibling rivalry? Hedden probably thought that question was too obvious. But in his hurry to paint his cleverly layered portrait, Hedden neglected to replace that obvious question with a better one, or any question at all. The result is a play that risks nothing and carries all the emotional weight of an unusually doleful Hallmark card. Hedden could explain the problem as well as I could, because he clearly knows that the count never stops: not for art, not for reflection, not for anything. In such a world, theater should do more with our time than kill it. It should surprise, reinvigorate; it should momentarily convince us that life is more adventure than tedium, more weird questions than pat answers. This is how the Count enthralls a gullible old man in Hedden's play, and it is what The Count fails to do for anybody else.
