Sep 19, 2013

REVIEW: "Mr. Burns, Post-Electrification Play" Pushes The Simpsons Beyond the Apocalypse

You won't be surprised to hear that the 24th season of The Simpsons will not stand the test of time. In fact, Anne Washburn's Mr.

In her new play, staged last year in Washington by the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and earlier this week at Playwrights Horizons in New York City, she says that in this post-nuclear holocaust world, telling stories is of utmost important. That is why recreating scenes from long-running animated series featuring classic episodes such as "Bart in the Dark" and "A Train Named Marge" is not just entertainment, but a means of survival and a way to cope with the horrors of a newer, darker world.

The play begins with a group of friends around a campfire recalling a line from the classic Simpsons episode "Cape Feare." The episode is a parody of the 1991 Robert DeNiro thriller Cape Fear, itself a remake of the 1962 film. The Simpsons episode is told in these details by the characters early in the play, but then takes on a life of its own, taking on a mythic quality that transforms it into a theatrical tragedy comparable to the works of Hesiod and Euripides.

According to Ben Brantley's glowing review in The New York Times, this first scene was scripted from an early workshop as the actors tried to recall lines from the episode in question. It's a treasure for hardcore fans of The Simpsons, and it would be hard not to want to contribute to the conversation. At the same time, it is tense and eerie, barely masking the unknown horrors that exist outside the proscenium.

In the second of three parts, the campfire group evolves into a fledgling theater company, perfectly recreating episodes of The Simpsons for a neighborhood audience. Honed by bartering with other survivors who remember random lines from lost episodes, their re-enactments now include choreographed medleys of commercials and Top 40s hits. But no matter how much they use their skills to drown their fears of uncertainty, it always comes back to The Simpsons, or more specifically, Cape Fear. [Each Simpsons episode is] a treasure-filled bridge to the past and to the future," says Brantley. In every era, there seems to be a Homer"

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In the last, the original story was deconstructed and seamlessly blended with far-flung popular references such as Britney Spears and "The Grinch Stole Christmas." The result was a self-referential play based on a popular television series that deftly dodged the line between the highbrow, the pretentious, the snide, the high art of low art, and the blurred line between the two. It skillfully and convincingly embodies storytelling as the cornerstone of our society and the question of what will continue to live on in our world after society collapses and is forced to rebuild.

"Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play" runs through October 20 at Playwrights Horizons' Mainstage Theater. The play is written by Anne Washburn, directed by Steve Cosson, with music by Michael Friedman.

(Photos: © Playwright Horizons & The New York Times)

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