Life Sucks

It totally sucks that this is the next-to-last production Jeff Storer will direct at the theater he and his partner Ed Hunt co-founded, and damnitall, it sucks to mourn this ending of theater in Durham as we have known if for 30 years before it even occurs. But it is a fine thing to go down laughing–which one does frequently during this deft and touching exploration of the longings and frustrations of a group of people who know each other well, if not as well as they thought they did.

FOUR AND a HALF STARS!

It’s a scene barely imaginable to 2017’s denizens of Durham’s downtown: empty buildings; empty sidewalks; sparse traffic. No baby strollers, no joggers, no dog-walkers, no sidewalk tables, no hotels or nationally-praised restaurants. Not one coffee shop. The banks were still here, and a few low-cost niche shops and storefront churches, and plenty of attorneys–and the oddballs: an artist or two; working folks who appreciated tall Budweisers with their greasy eggs at the Plaza, and others, more leisured, who preferred their Wild Irish Rose in the alleys and doorways; sweet, haunted Mr. Oscar Matthews, the shell-shocked Korean vet who made the rounds of downtown daily; and that nutty couple making an apartment over a boarded-up storefront. But there was the Bagel Dog (one of two local sources for the Sunday New York Times) and Amos and Andy’s venerable hot dog joint–and in the fall of 1987, another dog showed up, friendly and wanting to play: Manbites Dog Theater.

One felt that open welcome in the rooms, even in the early itinerant years, but in the theater’s 20 years in its own space on Foster Street, it has become an important physical spot in the urban intellectual fabric, a nexus of art and politics, a crossroads of thought and emotion, and a haven for those who care about such things.