"Epitaph" graces Hepburn Zoo

Author: Ben Salkowe

"Insanity," muttered one individual walking out of Epitaph, a sketch comedy originally performed by Ethan Sandler and Adrian Wenner and which made it's college debut in the Hepburn Zoo last weekend under directors Elizabeth Somes '06 and Rachel Dunlap '06. The one word review could not be a more accurate summation of the whirlwind kaleidoscope of sketches that fold in and out of one another throughout the brief show. Epitaph was, as the directors confessed, "under a different genre than most Zoo shows," but its failures as theatre - lacking depth, clarity or meaning - were its brilliant feats of comedy.

The mania begins at a funeral where two men - Corey (Andrew Bishop '05.5) and Warren (David Lindholm '05) - fall into arguing over who last spoke to the recently deceased Georgia Newman (voiced by Rachel Sommer '06.5) before she, well, deceased. The argument quickly escalates to all out war over who loved Georgia more and although we only meet the reportedly "perfect" woman through the voicemail messages she left Warren (which he has meticulously catalogued on his handheld recorder) we quickly see how she devastatingly inflicted every man she met with a paralyzing love-bug. The show follows the attempts of Corey and Warren to cope with their loss of Georgia - Corey embarks on a mission to quit smoking by taking an orange pill called Happy-cor, and Warren falls in the habit of making love to his couch while playing spliced recordings of Georgia's voicemail messages saying "Yes/Warren/Yes/Warren..." Over the course of the evening we meet a host of colorful and random characters including a psychotic travel agent with an aim to plan himself into his client's honeymoon and a pharmaceutical representative who wants to name the ambiguous orange pill he markets "boobs 'n pussy."

The entire cast of characters are played, hilariously, by Bishop and Lindholm. The production's deliberate lack of costumes, props or scenery left a tremendous challenge for strong comedic work as well as mime and even song - both actors met the challenge. Although the first sketches were slow to take-off, the performance quickly fired up and both actors fully embraced the lunacy of the script and their roles, casually and effortlessly switching from character to character and sketch to sketch at a moment's notice.

Somes and Dunlap succeeded tremendously in recreating the Sandler and Wenner sketch, the production's only absence was originality as it seemed to strive religiously to replicate the original sketch. Epitaph was an enjoyable and refreshing change of course from "most Zoo shows," but could it have been even more had the the cast and directors - all of whom have an obvious sense of wit and humor - either taken more liberty in making the production a more uniquely "Middlebury" performance, or jumped fully into their own creative minds and concocted a sketch comedy of their own? Delving into their own talents they might have made better use of the Zoo, the audience or the cast (as it was, the production merely sat the audience against a wall and had all of the action center around two chairs on a bare stage, straying little from the original sketch).

Then again, thinking of the final moment of the play where Georgia's very first admirer stumbled onto the stage wearing an imaginary apple tree costume and proceeded to break down in tears as "Georgia On My Mind" came blasting through the speakers - I would be lying if I said Epitaph had not offered Middlebury one of the most fun, zany and side-splitting evenings of entertainment to take over the Zoo this year - one this reviewer truly enjoyed.