CRASH BOUND
nytheatre.com review by Aaron Leichter
August 15, 2002
While some plays impress their audience through their urgency and
relevancy, others entertain their audience without exploring
their ideas too deeply. Crash Bound, an offering by the
FringeNYC Festival at Arthur’s Dress Shop, watches two airplane
passengers dream of better lives, calculate the probabilities of
an accident, and refuse to fall in love on the first leg of
their flight to L.A. As far as this plot goes, it’s acceptable,
although its execution meanders a great deal, lacking the arcs
needed to sustain tension. But playwright/actress Nina Waluschka
adds a series of references to Anton Chekhov’s plays. Sometimes
they’re humorous and provide the characters with depth, as when
her character muses, "I’m all three sisters rolled into one."
But often, these comments fly by so quickly that the audience
can’t connect them to the situation: the conceit comes across as
random.Waluschka and her acting partner Michael Onorato gamely play up the flights of fancy that their characters live their lives by, but neither quite convinces the audience that they believe in the preposterous notions. Even more problematically, Waluschka, Onorato, and director Julie Blumenthal don’t provide the story with tension and urgency. Mercifully short, Crash Bound only gets off the ground in its last beats, but by that time, its audience has bailed out.
