Refugee From Sitcom Land, Guzzling a Bile Cocktail ‘Enter at Forest Lawn,’ From the Amoralists
Alexis SoloskiJuly 16, 2014: For seven seasons, the writer Mark Roberts served as an executive producer on Two and a Half Men. Apparently, this has made him angry. Dangerously angry. Batten-down-the-hatches, threat-level-red, oh-God-I-think-he-might-actually-stroke-out angry. It’s risky to view a playwright’s work through the lens of his biography, but in Enter at Forest Lawn, a poisonous and intermittently funny comedy produced by the Amoralists, the lampoon is so thinly veiled as to be just about naked. With Derek Ahonen’s The Qualification of Douglas Evans, it forms what the Amoralists are calling “ ‘The Gyre,’ a two-play repertory exploring man’s vicious cycles.” On a set that resembles an entertainment exec’s lair or maybe one of Dante’s lesser-known rungs, Mr. Roberts plays Jack Story, a strychnine-bitter television writer with a hit sitcom about to break into syndication. Unfortunately, the show’s star, the lovable Uncle Danny, has some mild difficulties with drugs and women. “Syphilitic crackhead” and “open-sore little Malibu hophead” are perhaps the only printable descriptors Mr. Roberts employs.
READ THE REVIEW