'Belly' links anxieties to issues we all share

An Impending Rupture of the Belly

The Arizona Republic
Kerry Lengel
Publication Date: February 22, 2009

You might suspect "An Impending Rupture of the Belly" is meant as a political parable, if it didn't wear its politics on its sleeve.

Stray Cat Theatre's latest piece of confrontational cultural criticism tells the story of Clay Stilts, a father-to-be who's determined to protect his family from every conceivable danger, from bioterrorism to complete economic collapse.

"This is Pasadena, not Rwanda," observes Terri, his nonplused, very pregnant wife. "Not yet," he replies.

Desperate to derail her husband's impotent anxieties, Terri points out that he hasn't even been able to protect their home from the neighborhood dog that keeps depositing gifts on their lawn. This turns out to be exactly the wrong tack to take, as Clay sets out to prove her wrong - with tragic results.

A disturbingly dark comedy, Matt Pelfrey's 2-year-old play isn't content to merely imply its criticisms of George W. Bush's America. Clay is egged on by a testosterone-poisoned co-worker who quotes Hannity and Rush. When Clay sets out to "hit first, hit hard, make it count" in his suburban territorial dispute, the link to "shock and awe" is obvious.

More often than not, such political invective is the death of good art. But in this case, paradoxically, there seems to be a slyness at work in the directness of the message.

If the relationship between these individual characters and the grand drama of international politics were unspoken, the audience would still connect the dots but would read the story as a simple allegory for the past eight years. By explicitly linking the two, however, the playwright seems to suggest that both are merely symptoms of something deeper, something that we all suffer from, regardless of our voting records.

It's a provocative piece, and this production serves it well. Michael Peck makes a convincingly paranoid Everyman, while Tom Leveen is a scene-stealer as his half-crazed, crack-smoking brother. David Castellano's suburban-goth scenery sets the mood perfectly, as does John Caswell Jr.'s loudly neurotic sound design.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/ae/articles/2009/02/22/20090222...