CRABS IN A BUCKET


If Eugene Ionesco or Samuel Beckett were writing plays today, they might well have come up with something very much like Bernardo Cubría’s tangy absurdist comedy, Crabs In A Bucket, now getting its World Premiere at Echo Theater Company.

Chief crab-tagonists Amargo (Xochitl Romero) and Poots (Anna LaMadrid) have been trapped in a shucking bucket for more years than either of them can count, victims of what behavioralists call “crab mentality,” the notion that if stuck in a bucket, a single crab will manage to climb out, but throw in a few more ten-legged crustations and the struggle to break free will ensure that none of them succeeds.

It’s an analogy that playwright Cubría believes has kept the Latino theater community from celebrating the success of those like superstar Salma Hayek who’ve made it to the top.

And in Crabs In A Bucket, it’s a mentality that has left Amargo as embittered as their name would suggest and fellow loser Pootz bereft of hope.

Enter peppy, chatty (and equally nonbinary) bucket newcomer Beb (Jordan Hull), overjoyed to have made it from “The Before” to “The Bucket” (“It’s even better than I imagined!”) and supremely confident in their ability to end up on “The Outside,” the place where only “the most special of the special crabs” can go.

Completing Crabs In A Bucket’s cast of crab-acters is Momon (Michael Sturgis), who having succeeded in making it to “The Outside,” now finds their entitled self rather unceremoniously back where they started, with Amargo and Poots none too happy to have the escapee once again in their midst.

If this all sounds more than a bit off the wall, it is, and if the shenanigans have you scratching your head every so often (the way you probably did when you saw Beckett’s Waiting For Godot or Endgame or Happy Days, or Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano or Rhinoceros or The Chairs), well that’s what théâtre de l’absurde is likely to do, in addition provoking as equal parts laughter and seafood for thought.

Still, clever as Cubría’s play is on the printed page with its clever word play (“chitty” for “shitty,” “bullchit” for “bullshit,” and “shucking” for you can guess what), just wait until ace director Alana Dietze, a crackerjack cast, and as inventive a design team as any director or cast could hope for bring Crabs In A Bucket to delectably briny life on the Echo Theater stage.

Romero is grouchy perfection as the crabbiest of sore losers, LaMadrid makes for the most engaging of second bananas (if a crab can be called a banana), Hull is a nonstop treat as the most exuberant of decapods, and Sturgis’s Mamon proves the most irresistible of scene-stealers.

Scenic designer Amanda Knehans takes Cubría’s imagined “big, plastic, ugly, rotting, orange shucking bucket [that] smells of time and reeks of the almost” and runs with it, adding creative touches of her own (see production stills), and costume designer Lou Cranch does the same with Cubría’s instructions to avoid “cartoonish plushy suits, but hey it’s a play, so you do you,” which Cranch most certainly does. (Again see production stills.)

Add to this Jeff Gardner’s sparkling sound design (featuring Arian Saleh’s suitably quirky original music) and Azra King-Abadi’s dramatic lighting design (featuring some eye-dazzling strobe effects to complement movement coach Tristan Waldron’s anime-style tussles) and you’ve got a playwright’s dream of a production design.

Crabs In A Bucket is produced by Chris Fields and Troy Leigh-Ann Johnson. Julia Davis is clown consultant. Irene DH Lee is production stage manager. Lucy Pollak is publicist.

Guaranteed to give audiences plenty to think about while delivering a shucking bucketful of laughs, Bernardo Cubría’s Crabs In A Bucket serves up the sweet-and-saltiest theatrical meal in town.

The Echo Theater Company @ Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater Village.
www.EchoTheaterCompany.com

–Steven Stanley
July 28, 2023
Photos: Cooper Bates

 

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