Guthrie Theater

REVIEW: Guthrie's "Tiny Kushner" packs a big punch
by Jay Gabler, TCDailyPlanet.net 

Size matters not-whether you're a Jedi master or a theatrical presentation. Such is demonstrated by Tiny Kushner, the collection of short plays by Tony Kushner now playing at the Guthrie's smallest venue, the Dowling Studio. These short plays in a close setting make for an entertaining evening, and occasionally have an outsize impact.

The five plays are performed in rapid succession (with one intermission) by a sterling cast of four: Jim Lichtscheidl, Valeri Mudek, Kate Eifrig, and J.C. Cutler. The five works all touch on themes of guilt and responsibility, morality plays referencing (and in some cases starring) prominent public figures. Three of the five are set in the afterlife, and two feature psychoanalysis.

Freudian psychology both draws on and has influenced so many dramatic tropes that featuring therapy in a play is to risk falling down a steep and slippery well of dead archetypes. Writers' best bet may be to play it for laughs, as Woody Allen has done so successfully (Annie Hall, Deconstructing Harry) and Kushner manages to some degree here. Still, Terminating or Sonnet LXXV or "Lass Meine Schmerzen Nicht Verloren Sein" or Ambivalence and Dr. Arnold A. Hutschnecker in Paradise-how much of Kushner's fame is due to his winning favor among critics with word counts to meet under tight deadlines?-bog down in tedious discussions of transference and counter-transference.

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