Antlia Pneumatica
Opening Night: April 4, 2016
Closing: April 24, 2016
Theater: Playwrights Horizons
In a ranch house deep in Texas Hill Country, a once tight-knit group of friends reunites to bury one of their own. But as they look backward through their lives, it becomes clear they’ve lost more than just their old pal. In this haunting new play from Anne Washburn, the boundaries between then and now grow disarmingly blurry as these estranged friends confront their slippery past.
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April 4, 2016
Audiences for Anne Washburn’s “Antlia Pneumatica,” which opened on Monday night at Playwrights Horizons, could be excused for wondering if its title might be ancient Greek for “The Big Chill.” Like that popular Lawrence Kasdan movie from 1983, this brow-furrowing work from the author of “Mr. Burns” reunites a group of scattered friends on the cusp of middle age when one of their old gang dies abruptly. As in Mr. Kasdan’s film, the characters in Ms. Washburn’s play assemble south of the Mason-Dixon line (though in this case, it’s Texas, not South Carolina) to ponder their wild pasts, their anxious presents and the eventual deaths that await them all. They, too, gather in the kitchen to prepare food while rehashing old gossip, tentatively rekindle old love affairs and sing together at night. Of course, what they sing is a bit different from the Motown standards favored by the folks in “The Big Chill.” These 21st-century mourners intone ditties (written by Daniel Kluger and Ms. Washburn) that lean to solemn melodies and stark, apocalyptic lyrics involving nature in upheaval.
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