Shakespeare, Homer, and Homegirl

Epic poetry clashes strangely with sitcom in The Tragedy of Miggilicutty, a full-length play written and directed by Adam Chaznit, TD '03. Though the setting is a chain deli, the protagonist's speech never dips below dramatic verse and alliteration, underscored throughout this staged reading by the characters' refrains of "Smith's Submarine Sandwich Shop!" Chaznit conflates television allusions with literary ones, forcing the slapstick and suburban humor of an '80s TV series into references to Shakespeare, Homer, and Virgil. The combination of Achilles with Macbeth and the generic teenager points The Tragedy of Miggilicutty in so many directions that it leaves the play virtually directionless. Characters don't change and tragic ideas remain trivial.

KATHERINE ALDRICH/YH Oh, Pork and Julie, what hooligans you are.

"It can begin. I have arrived," announces Miggilicutty (Adam Overett, SM '00), who storms down the stairs of Nick Chapel in a pirate outfit, distracting the audience from a table set with sandwich fixings. He has come to "change the world," to inject his fellow men with "passion!" Overett has a hard time proselytizing the passionless, accomplishing his mission only in a parodic dream scene in which his co-workers serenade him with a tiresome theme of "You're an inspiration" shouted over and over to the rustling of unwieldy scripts. The girl (Alyssha Powanda, CC '03) who conveniently captures his heart in the first scene—she's eating a sandwich and talking to the bouncer, what more could an epic hero want?—has a name to match her attitude: "Pork." "My mom thought it was pretty," she says. Homegirl strips to sexy and Powanda struggles between tough and cute, which unfortunately conjures up images of D.J. from Full House.

In one of the play's truly hilarious scenes, Mrs. Smith's (Emily Guilmette, TD '03) fired manager Sammy (James DuRuz, TD '03) seeks revenge as Saucy Sammy the Sassy Sausage Chef. Brandishing a belt of sausages, he convinces Julie (Molly Kleiman, SY '03) to leave Miggilicutty and work for him. This precipitates an economic and mental depression at Smith's Submarine Sandwich Shop, and Frank (Jeff Miller, MC '03) finally quits after Miggilicutty explodes in familiar but unparalleled histrionics—"It's plague! Plague has struck!"—over a piece of bread covered in mold that predictably turns out to be bleu cheese. Miller imitates Overett's franticness in this scene, which seems an attempt to stir up his otherwise flat (though reliable and endearing) character.

Chaos gives way to comedy, then dives to farce, as Miggilicutty muses on the rhyme between "death" and "breath." His decision to attempt suicide sets the scene for the last group drama. He sees through his friends' kind hearted gestures, but their will is stronger than their acting. Miggilicutty ignores Pork's superficial "I love you"—repeated in fading voice until, dejected and discouraged, she leaves—but still his tragedy fails. He trudges back up the same stairs he bounced down in the beginning, proving the stagnancy of his character.

A botched suicide is only one of Miggilicutty's many melodramatic failures. Another notable one is his obsession with profundity, an obsession neither realized nor trashed by the end. Pork reaches her peak, in acting and in character, when she lists for Miggilicutty what she wants to do, things he calls ordinary: she wants to watch TV and eat potato chips till the sun comes up, she wants to forget about Miggilicutty's adventures, and by this point so do we. Pork wins the audience's affection when she professes what some of us have been thinking. Enough with adventure, she announces: "I want to get stoned listening to Bob Dylan." (The audience should at least enjoy the visual perks of a directionless life.) Well, here's to being ordinary.

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