THEATRE + COMEDY

Black Lab Theatre presents Dying City, a play by Christopher Shinn, Thursday - Sunday, April 14-17, in Hamman Hall on the Rice University campus. Directed by Aaron Garrett. Staring Jordan Jaffe and Sigrid Owen.

The war in Iraq. The uses and abuses of antidepressants. The mindset of identical twins. America's obsession with food. The reason why Law & Order has stayed on the air for 14 years. All these topics and more are discussed in a mere 80 minutes. Set in Manhattan in 2005, Dying City focuses on Kelly, a therapist who is still mourning the loss of her soldier husband Craig in the Iraq war a year earlier. She is visited one night by Craig's twin brother Peter, a gay actor who has just deserted the stage in the middle of a production of Long Day's Journey Into Night.

Interspersed with the scenes about Peter are scenes that flash back more than a year to Craig's last night in New York before his return to active duty. The "dying city" of the title refers to Craig's description of Baghdad, but it also seems to refer to New York, the city that all three characters are trying to escape from in different ways.

“Anyone who doubts that Mr. Shinn is among the most provocative and probing of American playwrights today need only experience the creepy, sophisticated welding of form and content that is ‘Dying City.’”

"Nothing is entirely what it seems in 'Dying City,' and no one is exactly who you think they are".

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