The trouble with Shel’s Shorts, particularly in this second program of oddball vignettes by Shel Silverstein, is that they’re not short enough. In the penultimate playlet of Shel Shocked, which is funnier than most that have preceded it, a woman unhealthily obsessed by a hanging piece of cuticle — indeed with the entire recurring phenomenon of hanging bits of cuticle — talks about it all day. She commences her recital in a doctor’s office, then proceeds to the elevator, the subway, and the movies; she even yammers about her hangnail under the sheets as a significant other makes vigorous love to her. ( " I try not to dwell on it, " she remarks absurdly.) But one day is not enough for this sketch, which continues to a new morning, in which our heroine fixates on her dangling cuticle through a funeral, a mugging, and Confession, finally turning her infinitesimally flayed finger into a manicurial metaphor for human vulnerability in the world. I’m sorry, but this display, however amusingly cockeyed and myopic at first, is just not funny anymore!
And sad to say, though the same troupe that ably inhabits the more successful Shel’s Shorts: Signs of Trouble brings its considerable crazed and deadpan talents to bear, too many of the bits that make up Shel Shocked aren’t all that funny in the first place. Director Larry Coen, who helms the second evening, does his best, inventing a wordless prologue that would seem to tie post–September 11 anxiety to that which floats beneath the surface of Silverstein’s small absurdist comedies. And before things even get started, Caleb Wertenbaker’s ingenious pop-out set (which serves for both productions) is festooned with a bulging-eyed projection of Silverstein that suggests there was more pulsing in the beloved author than children’s whimsies.
Still, it’s hard to know why the Market Theater didn’t just present one program of Silverstein’s finest doodles, most of which show up in Signs of Trouble. The best playlet in Shel Shocked, the one that hinges on a dog-banishing edict, would have fit perfectly into the program spurred by signage. In " No Dogs Allowed, " Marin Ireland’s imperious tropical vacationer insists, in increasingly farfetched ways, to Robert Pemberton’s suspicious functionary at a canine-unfriendly resort that her dog, who’s swathed in towels in a lounge chair, is her spouse. The hidden personage’s hirsuteness and other peculiarities are variously explained as war injuries and remnants of a one-time circus career as " Jo-Jo the dog-faced boy. "
One rather graphic vignette in Shel Shocked will at least prove an eye opener to anyone who thinks the venerable author of children’s verse hit a risqué high with " They’ve Put a Brassiere on the Camel " (from A Light in the Attic). In " Dreamers, " a gruff John Kuntz and a nervously appealing Robert Pemberton play plumbers plying their trade in a bathroom (and giving new meaning to the term " bathroom humor " ). Pemberton’s Ritchie tentatively gives voice to a homosexual dream; Kuntz’s Nick pooh-poohs it as probably " symbolic " and nothing to worry about. He then proceeds to allay his friend’s fears in ways that would get a psychiatrist arrested and casually reveals some pretty sick snooze fancies of his own. Here as elsewhere, it becomes clear that Silverstein’s adult-oriented work, particularly when it comes to homophobia, was not always in the best of taste.
The cast does excellent work, though. Neil A. Casey and Laura Latreille bring bold, genuine emotions to a sketch about a husband concerned his wife is becoming a " bag lady, " and that makes it work better than it might (though this one, too, goes on way too long). Casey brings Mamet-esque cadence to an existential treatise on why it’s important to " wear a hard hat in a hard-hat area. " And Stephanie Clayman, contemplating that hangnail, is the picture of earnest, distracted fixation. None of the actors winks at the material, and that’s essential. I just wish there were more for the audience to wink at.
