by Ned Colby '02

directed by Beth Newhall '02

produced by Jennifer Banner and Ned Colby '02

Adams House Pool Theater

Georges Depardieu falls into bed and wakes up in an altered reality where he meets himself and his girlfriend-twice. First, the self and girlfriend whom he encounters are a pimp and a prostitute, respectively; in the second such couple, gender roles are reversed. Billing the one-act play as a "zany comedy with serious undercurrents," author and co-producer Ned Colby, who is also a Crimson editor, declines to elaborate on his script, its title or its premise, explaining that he wants audience members to "make up their own minds about what the play is saying-or saying for them." But director Beth Newhall '02 offers a hint to bewildered readers: It's supposed to explore how media outlets like television can interfere with self-discovery and the formulation of identity. Newhall promises to sidestep the "heavy-handed and pretentious" and keep things light, but whether Split Confusion succeeds may depend more on whether Colby has found anything new to say within the well-trodden genre of zany comedies with serious undercurrents. In any case, if its predecessors in the healthy tradition of absurdist drama are any indication, Split Confusion should induce its own share of laughter.

Agamemnon