Woolly Mammoth Theatre Co., Washington, D.C.
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Anne Washburn is a master at revealing weighty truths “through seemingly frivolous means,” said Sophie Gilbert in Washingtonian. In her latest bit of sorcery, Washburn has imagined a post-apocalyptic future in which a 1993 episode of The Simpsons, remembered fondly by a small band of traumatized survivors, is distorted and transformed across several decades into a touchstone work of a new culture. The characters’ recollection of the episode grows murky—they eventually even forget that the show was a comedy. But they ultimately re-enact the episode with an almost religious fervor. Washburn’s message is “both heartening and dismaying.” Culture will survive even the worst catastrophe, this play suggests, but “it might not be the kind of culture you’d hope would endure.”
Not that this play ever belittles The Simpsons, said Peter Marks in The Washington Post. Washburn makes the show seem worthy of becoming the Oedipus of our time, and director Steven Cosson runs with the “astonishing audacity” of the premise, convincingly creating a place in which electronic entertainment devices exist only in the collective memory of the survivors. He’s aided by a stellar cast—Erika Rose, for example, somehow “manages to disappear into Bart’s boyish countenance,” and Steve Rosen is delightful as he “assumes in deadpan fashion the role of Homer.” Nods to The Simpsons, though, matter less than the future the play’s characters inhabit. Theirs is “an alien world that’s all too familiar,” and Washburn’s depiction of it “makes the post-