Love and Hate for The Neofuturists

By Rob Christopher in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 8, 2009 5:30PM

Today marked the third and final performance of Greg Allen's take on the Eugene O'Neill epic Strange Interlude. We saw it last night and it was not your typical evening at the Goodman Theatre, involving as it did the singing of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and a sex scene with a Cabbage Patch Kid. In true Neofuturist fashion, Allen's adaptation took the play completely apart and then put it back together in ways that a lot of audience members found shocking. In fact hecklers attempted to disrupt the first two performances, shouting "Why are you butchering this play?" and "You don't know how to do O'Neill!" Yet at the end of Saturday's show there was a standing ovation.

The internet has been buzzing with reactions from both sides. One commenter, who didn't bother to stay longer than the second act, refers to the Neofuturists as a "puerile one-trick pony of a theater company." Others write "Greg Allen committed fraud" and "They should be ashamed of themselves and so should Bob Falls and Goodman for this Saturday Night Live version of O'Neill." But defenders have described it as "incredibly insightful," "endlessly inventive, brilliantly preposterous" and "one of the greatest playgoing experiences of my life."

Well, we loved it. By magnifying O'Neill's relentless artificiality, Allen and crew paradoxically also showed his humanity and tenderness. It's heartening to see that even in our jaded age, an evening at the theater can be this engaging (and funny and profound).