Theatre in Review: The Panic of '29 (Less Than Rent Theatre/59E59)

	Will Turner, Julia Knitel. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

When playwright Graham Techler falls in love with a joke, the attraction is forever. So devoted is he to his little whimsies that can never let them go; instead, he trots them out repeatedly, like a proud parent showing off his darlings. If you share his ardor -- admittedly, not a likely scenario -- The Panic of '29 will be a treat. If not, you'd better hunker down for a long, long evening.

Techler especially enjoys indulging in little bits of wordplay. One of the play's main characters, Richard Whitney -- based on the real-life financier who tried to avert the 1929 stock market crash -- boasts of his connection to President Herbert Hoover: "Herb and I met while sharing a schvitz in Chuck Schwab's sauna" -- a line that gets two additional airings. A nice young speakeasy worker named Ingrid moons over "Silent but Moving Pictures" -- the capitalization is the playwright's -- a term quickly adopted by everyone else onstage. Ingrid's favorite film is titled Five Times a Lady, Three Times a Dame, a mild jape that doesn't justify four repeat mentions. Later, after the US economy is in freefall and people are starving, New York City suffers a wave of "police murder; the kind where it happens to them." The killer is known as Tommy Gun Tommy; in The Panic of '29, even the names are redundant.

The playwright, who contributes humor pieces to McSweeney's and The New Yorker, also specializes in a subcategory of non sequitur gags in which the punch line is, ipso facto, the absence of one. Perhaps carefully arranged on a page, with wide margins, lots of white space, and a clever title, these might amuse. In the theatre, they shrivel upon exposure. For example: A cop, in the throes of passion with his lady love, says, "I wanna be like you. Totally free. Wild. Raucous, and happy as a clam in water. Happy as a mollusk in water. Happy as a cuttlefish in --" His partner exclaims, "Kent! You read those books about the ocean I gave you!"

Or try this: At a press conference, Whitney, insisting that the market is sound, gets peppered with questions from skeptical journalists. For example, a reporter asks, "Do you seriously expect our industrious American readers to remain blithe and unconcerned about the events in London, England?" She is referring to "how Scotland is now owned by Wales, Wales is now owned by Ireland, and Ireland is now owned by Scotland."

Or this: Recalling their glory days, one of Whitney's associates, says, "You used to have lots of friends in high places, Dick. You used to be able to call up any steakhouse in Manhattan and get a steak brought right to you in five minutes! Even if it was raining! Even if traffic was congested, Dick! At the New York Stock Exchange Christmas party, you won the award for 'Tightest Skin!'" Beaming at the memory, Whitney says, "I did! I had the tightest skin of them all!"

Well, you see what I mean. Techler apparently thinks that carpet-bombing the audience with such remarks will induce an atmosphere of hilarity -- a strategy that needs a rethink. Matching this scattered, not-quite humor is the plot, which wanders, bizarrely and inconclusively, in various directions. It begins with Whitney and his minions trying to avert a depression, then shifts to the speakeasy and its denizens before embroiling them and a couple of hobos with Tommy Gun Tommy. The second act, set more than a decade later, finds the surviving characters inhabiting a kind of collectivist boardinghouse in Niagara Falls run by Dot, Whitney's former secretary. This semi-utopia is menaced by a trio of French siblings, heirs to a fur hat dynasty, who, for reasons I couldn't possibly explain, want to take over the joint, converting it into a capitalist enterprise. About that, I have one thing to say: If I were a member of Congress, I would introduce a bill outlawing the onstage use of cra-zee Gallic accents for allegedly humorous purposes; I believe the American people would thank me.

The director, Max Friedman, does nothing to dispel the atmosphere of an end-of-the-semester college theatre department show. Indeed, he encourages the actors to take a confident, hard-sell approach to even the weakest bits. Prime practitioners are Erik Lochtefeld, blustering and shouting as Whitney, and Will Roland, as a writer for something called Crimes Magazine, rattling his lines at screwball comedy speed. Some actors take care of themselves: Olivia Puckett, as Dot, maintains a cool, common-sense attitude throughout. As a cabaret singer improbably named Lady Generosity, Julia Knitel throws away her lines with the aplomb of an Irene Dunne or Carole Lombard. (She has plenty to throw away, too, given a dire running gag about typhoid fever.) She also puts her powerful voice to good use on a couple of original songs with surprisingly lively lyrics. It helps that most of her scenes are with Will Turner, pulling off a deft double act an unconsciously poetic Irish cop and a country balladeer with an aggressive twinkle in his eye.

The design credits are negligible except for Margaret Montagna's sound effects, which include telephone voices, angry crowds, machines, phonographs, and much more. Whatever motivated the people at Less Than Rent -- who presented Talene Monahon's pertinent and engaging How to Load a Musket at 59E59 just before lockdown in 2020 -- to take on this strange, self-referential project must remain mysterious. As entertainment, it is, sad to say, bankrupt. --David Barbour