FRINGE REVIEW: IRISH AUTHORS HELD HOSTAGE

There's just something about Irish authors that makes them so much more amusing than American or English writers. Maybe it's the brogue. Whatever it is, it makes the charming and delightful Irish Authors Held Hostage a winner of a comedy, and a great way for a literati to unwind and laugh at the classics.

The plot is in the title: ten Irish authors (and one Englishwoman) are taken hostage by various radicals throughout time. That's it. Nothing deep, here. The authors talk to their captors, the captors struggle to figure out who is really the prisoner of whom, and it's all about as deep and as funny as a post-modern Marx Brothers routine. Oscar Wilde seduces his captor, Bram Stoker drinks the blood of his, Samuel Beckett is allowed to go but (of course) does not move, and Emily Brontë isn't even Irish to begin with. It's all very light, frothy, and deliriously silly.

There's no need to be very familiar with the authors or their work to find something funny in John Morogiello's script– his sense of the absurd is razor sharp, but never too high-brow to be understood by the average theatregoer. The authors, played by Kevin Carolan, Lori Boyd, and Morogiello himself, are slapstick caricatures, designed to be funny rather than three-dimensional. The various terrorists, be they Muslim extremists, Midwestern militiamen, Columbian drug lords, or Basque separatists, are deliciously funny buffoons, almost all played by Terence Heffernan in a multitude of accents. Tina Eck and Matt Shortridge bridge scenes with traditional Irish music, and Lori Boyd often joins in to sing. It gives the audience a chance to catch its collective breath during the pauses, and keeps the mood going throughout scene changes.

In a Fringe Fest filled with dark, intense dramas and pointed political satire, it's quite nice to have a truly silly and enjoyable comedy that makes no pretense to a deeper meaning. Irish Authors Held Hostage is just meant to be fun, and it succeeds admirably.