Australian playwright Ross Mueller found himself in this situation on Superbowl day in 2009. The Global Financial Crisis is underway and yet spirits are high with the recent election of Barack Obama as President. The experience inspired his play Zebra! named for the mating and social practices of zebras where the young bucks fight the older stallions to establish harems of their own.
In the play two men, Colin Friels and Bryan Brown walk into a NYC Irish bar one snowy morning unaware at that stage how their lives are linked. Nadine Garner is the bar owner who 'referees' what ensues.
A 105 minutes long three hander with no interval and just the one long scene can be a bit of a gamble but the premise of the play is promising and it's cast is potentially exciting. Unfortunately the author, director and cast haven't quite pulled it off. The dialogue seemed witty and was funny at times but some of it went over my head. Were some of the references too American for me? To some extent I think they were. Did the cast fail to deliver? Not Friels and Garner in my view as they performed strongly but Brown, who playing the Australian should be in his element, was so laid back speaking his lines at one speed and at one pitch that he seemed to be on a different planet from the other two. Mk commented to me as we departed that the performance confirmed that Brown is a film actor not a theatre actor.
A reasonable night's entertainment but disappointingly less than what I was expecting.
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