Bunbury

What would happen if ROMEO AND JULIET had a happy ending, Tennessee Williams's Blanche Dubois did not go mad, or Chekhov's THREE SISTERS really did make it to Moscow? BUNBURY: A SERIOUS PLAY FOR TRIVIAL PEOPLE strives to answer these questions. To recap all the literary and dramatic alterations found in this play would be impossible. What is possible to note is the outstanding performance by Peter Paige, who, as Bunbury, employs an animated vocal style to create a most interesting character. Overall, the production is well paced, with each character definitively voiced with energy and focus. Listeners will enjoy this journey through altered classic literature. M.R.E. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

April 30, 2007
Peter Paige, who played Emmett Honeycutt in Showtime’s Queer as Folk, takes on the title role in a full-cast recording of Tom Jacobson’s play. Bunbury, a never-seen character in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, joins forces with nonappearing Romeo and Juliet figure Rosaline (Crossing Jordan’s Kathryn Hahn) to travel across the literary canon to empower his brothers and sisters in literary purgatory (including Blanche DuBois’s young husband in Streetcar Named Desire and George and Martha’s offstage son from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), conjured as plot devices but never brought to life. The pair’s intrusions inadvertently transform dark tragedies into lighthearted comedies. Jacobson adds a slightly more serious twist to the frivolity by shedding light on gay subtexts in classic works. Paige and Hahn both inhabit their roles skillfully. The allusions require a solid grounding in literature, particularly drama, to fully grasp and appreciate. Perhaps too referential for the most mainstream of audiences, Bunbury will appeal to erudite listeners with an appetite for irreverence.