Aussie Absurdist

By T.E. Kalem

ROOTED by ALEXANDER BUZO

Absurdist playwrights like Ionesco and Pinter have taken as their special province the psychic discordance --both funny and unnerving--that occurs when words are out of sync with reality, as in a dubbed movie. This is at the root of Rooted, the first full-length play by Australia's Alexander Buzo, 28, which is being given its U.S. premiere by Connecticut's Hartford Stage Company. Buzo is no tracing-paper mimic; he is linked to Ionesco and Pinter by an intuitive kinship of mind, spirit and talent.

The play's hero, Bentley (Jack Murdock), speaks ad copy. He is the adjunct of his possessions, the stereo set, transistor and white antiseptic machine for nonliving that he calls his "home unit." He adores his wife (Barbara Caruso) though she makes him a voyeur to his own cuckolding. He has unquestioning faith in his friends, though they are parasitic phonies. Perishing in a snowdrift of optimistic cliches, Bentley loses all -- home, wife, job, future.

In the wings, and never seen, is a devil ex machina, Simmo, a man who strip-mines simple souls like Bentley. Buzo tells us that the meek do not in herit the earth, and that the power-brutes who do pocket only cinders.

Rarely has black comedy been more lavish in its laughter. As for Murdock's Bentley, it is a masterly portrait, initially of a puppy dog, later of a crushed fellow human whom no one could fail to cherish.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.