The Poetry of Pizza

continued

along by the momentum of the first act plus hilarious bits of good character acting, the first act is stunningly, achingly perfect.

The year is 1998. The place is Copenhagen. The cultural milieu is postmodern and pre-9/11. American academic poetry theorist Sarah Middleton (Michelle Mountain), in Denmark on something like a Fulbright, falls in love with Kurdish refugee Soran Saleen (Qarie Marshall) who works at the neighborhood pizzeria. Sarah and her postmodern poetics are poleaxed by Soren's simple narrative of a hard life in which each event has meaning and value — something outside her clever, analytical experience.

Or is it just lust? And if it is, what is the value of simply being moved off your axis? The chemistry between these two lights up the stage (which, it should be said, lights itself up quite nicely without them — the backdrop, a hard rocky coast of Denmark, shifts gorgeously from hard pinky purples to soft turquoise: lighting design by Dana White, set by Bartley H. Bauer).