Synopsis "Transatlantica (in English)"
Part murder mystery, part unrequited romance, and part absurdist debacle about the denial and transcendence of death, TRANSATLANTICA tells the story of Dr Reginald Reinhold, whose psychoanalytic session with an eccentric patient, Ilyria (of the land of Ilyria), is interrupted by his wife with news that she is dying. By coincidence, Ilyria too is dying, as is every subsequent visitor to his home—a parade of increasingly eccentric guests. With death dancing at every door, Dr Reinhold is forced to confront his own peculiar relationship with mortality. The setting is the parlor of Dr Reinhold’s mansion (festooned with mythical taxidermy and curious artifacts) on the shores of the fantastic continent of Transatlantica, a topsy-turvy world where gardens are planted with cake and lovers grow into trees. “You have to admire a venturesome spirit like Kenny Finkle, the young author of TRANSATLANTICA. The play…is a lunatic fable that considers love and death and fate in a series of ever more preposterous iterations. Meant to be Dadaist or surreal, it’s the kind of show that consciously walks the line between purposeful wit and meaningless idiocy, that wants to make you laugh at its zany nonsense and reflect upon it philosophically as well…” Bruce Weber, The New York Times “It’s hard to adequately praise a show as good as TRANSATLANTICA, because running down a list of all the things that are entertaining and brilliant about it spoil the surprise of discovery, and part of the sheer joy of experiencing this show is not having any idea what’s coming next. It’s only minor hyperbole to say that TRANSATLANTICA has everything that is good and true about theatre (genius dialogue, characters randomly breaking into song, melodramatic deaths, sword fights, etc). It is, simply, the best show I’ve seen this year.” Danny Bowes, nytheatre.com
