Laughing Wild returns to KZN stage

LISA Bobbert and Darren King reprise their award-winning roles in Laughing Wild, Christopher Durang’s internationally acclaimed comedy, which returns to the KZN stage after an absence of 10 years.

Laughing Wild deals with the struggle of two people attempting to make sense of the world in which they are forced to live – coping with the everyday stress of trying to buy a can of tuna, coming to grips with the infinitely more taxing subject of religion.

Set in New York in the late 80s, the play is structured around two 30-minute monologues, followed by a 30-minute second act, some of it monologue, some of it scenes between the two characters who remain unnamed.

As the play opens a woman enters and launches into an increasingly frenetic recital of the hazards and frustrations of city life in America – waiting in queues, encountering impolite taxi drivers, being exposed to fatuous talk shows and encountering inconsiderate supermarket shoppers. She is especially enraged by a man who obstructed her from buying a can of tuna, whom she attacked in a fit of temper.

In the second monologue the man appears. While the subjects upon which he expounds (nuclear waste, the intolerance of the Catholic Church, particularly in sexual matters, the threat of Aids) are broader in context, he too dwells on an incident in a supermarket, when a strange woman hit him over the head in the tuna fish aisle.

The two protagonists finally meet, and re-enact varying interpretations of the supermarket incident before launching into an explosively funny parody of a talk show.

Theatre goers can revisit this comic masterpiece when it plays at the Hilton Arts Festival on 19 and 20 September at 7.30pm. Tickets cost R180 via www.hiltonfestival.co.za

Alternatively you can see it at DHS’s Seabrookes Theatre in Musgrave from 2 to 12 October. Performances are at 7.30pm Tuesday to Saturday and 3pm on Sunday. Tickets cost R100 each and can be booked through Web Tickets at www.webtickets.co.za