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Published on 6/17/08
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“Welcome to the Museum of Kirk!” an actor gushes at the lobby entrance. His costume is jacket-and-tie, and his name tag reads docent: kirk. In fact, a dozen performers, wearing tags, all claiming to be Kirk, are scattered throughout the venue, which has been fashioned as a scrappy museum devoted to Kirk Wood Bromley and his plays.
Don’t let the Being John Malkovich–type premise (or the title) fool you: Me is not your usual theatrical exhibitionism. In fact, downtown cult fave Bromley (a verse-obsessed dramatist) uses his ego as a starting point to explore a lightly connected list of topics: the extinct Yangtze River dolphin, placentas, the environmental impact of our choices, and how identity is created and maintained…among other things.
The text is part word-boggling verse, part mythic prose, part uplifting song (music penned and performed by John Gideon) and all quirk. Alec Duffy’s production is most energized when the cast reverts to “me” mode, musing about theater and the nature of the self as Kirk. Oddly, for all its self-consciousness, Me brings about longing for more “Kirk-iness,” and fewer attempts to incorporate far-reaching, disparate concepts. Afterward, despite the efforts of a dozen docents, you may know little more about the author—or yourself, for that matter.
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