The Myopia: An Epic Burlesque of Tragic Proportions - An Exciting One-Man Show

On Sunday evening I attended a performance of The Foundry Theatre's production of "The Mypodia: An Epic Burlesque of Tragic Proportions," written and performed by David Greenspan.  David Greenspan is a wonder.  He has a written a full-length, two-act play that is full of imagination, provocative insights, dazzling verbal virtuosity, and he delivers it in an engaging, rapid-fire conversational style, seated the entire time, keeping an audience absolutely riveted.  It is impossible to encapsulate this production in a few words.  I was drawn to attend it by a short advertisement talking about how it had something to do with a writer-composer attempting to complete a musical comedy about the life of Warren G. Harding, the ill-fated President of the U.S. from 1921-23.  Well, yes, it has something to do with that, and what Greenspan has to say about Harding and his adventures in national politics is amusing, thought-provoking, and full of interesting parallels to our present-day political messes, but the Harding stuff is embedded in layers of other stories that are related with the skills of a master story-teller.  I can't recommend this highly enough.  

On Sunday, this was the second half of a two-party, starting at 7:30.  The earlier part, also performed by Greenspan (but which I did not see), was a late-afternoon matinee of "Plays" by Gertrude Stein.  I can imagine that a few hours of Greenspan delivering a Stein text would be equally riveting.  In the elevator coming up to ground level (this was at Atlantic Theatre Company's sub-sub-terranean Studio 2 in Chelsea), somebody mentioned having attended "Plays" in the afternoon, and professing amazement at Greenspan's ability to perform both productions with such enthusiasm and energy in the same day. 

"The Myopia" is a theatrical treat.  See a master in action....