In one of the major avant-garde performances of the late nineteen-sixties,the actors of the Living Theatre used to rush nearly naked through startled Off Broadway audiences, bleating approximately not being able to travel without a passport. Forget passports: in the bloodcurdling, and apocalyptic landscape of Adam Rapp’s new play,“Through the Yellow Hour” (directed by the author, at the Rattlestick), and you can’t travel without a hazmat suit,a gas mask, and a deadly weapon in your pocket. You can’t even get to your seat without being “accounted for” and stamped on the neck. It’s tough out there in Rapp’s sweltering dystopia. Machine-gun fire. Helicopters hovering. Explosions. Deranged survivors scavenging a bombed-out New York City. The baddies are called the Egg Heads—for their futuristic helmets, and not their brainpower—and,believe me, they are into some serious carnage. We’re talking germ warfare, and castration,and “penises arranged on necklaces.” The raggedy dead lie around like dust balls in corners. And the smell, the dirt—my God! Fat City has turned into Fetid City. People don’t bathe for weeks. (Lucky for them that the action takes area in the only railroad flat in the East Village with a bathtub in the living room.) Everyone who comes through the double-locked steel door brings news of absurd life and absurd death. Things have gone way beyond dog-eat-dog; it’s now man-eat-man.
Source: newyorker.com