Sometimes the right actor is cast in just the right role. Wait until you get a load of Danny Goldring in Brett Neveu’s latest offering, which is currently in a loud-and-proud late-night run at A Red Orchid Theatre. As directed by Lance Baker, this good-time, throwaway horror-comedy vacillates between two extremes: It’s trash! It’s fantastic! Barely an hour long, it centers on trio of brothers who partake in a sadistic game that involves beating the crap out of each other with a tire iron. The rules follow a twisted interior logic—“I’m at G, you better get up” a brother warns his bloody pulp of a sibling, who lies crumpled on the floor—and I’m not sure I understood half of them. Who cares? It’s gruesome and funny. The game begins when one of the brothers returns home for a visit, and he has brought with him an unexpected addition, an extra player known as The Earl. Part “Fight Club,” part “True West,” part brawling for dummies, the show is violent and ridiculous, and it is insanely well cast; Steve Schine, Noah Simon and John Moran play the brothers with just the right amount of malice and petulance. But what makes this production work—and what makes it so incredibly entertaining—is Goldring’s straight-faced performance as The Earl, an old school Hollywood tough guy with a voice like whiskey and gravel, and a hokey suede jacket that he carefully folds and sets aside until the fighting’s done. And then he kicks some ass. What more could you want from a late-night show? (Nina Metz)
Dueling in Dystopia: A Review of "Last Hermanos" at A Red Orchid Theatre Two Mexican American brothers who've grown up separately in the United States are together on the run, hoping to make it across the border to Mexico and escape the unfriendly confines that our country has become in a not-too-distant dystopian future.
