The Underpants

continued

The playwright, the actors, and director Anthony Caselli don't spoil the joke with earnest social commentary. Instead, The Underpants highlights the politics of the period by making the Jew a sniveling coward, the poet an airheaded poof, the women amoral sluts who entirely justify the lockdown policies of their husbands. The linchpin of this little collection of lovables is the husband, played by Wayne David Parker, whose portrayal of a self-satisfied, bullying, chauvinistic proto-Aryan is brilliantly inventive. Parker makes every one of Martin's lines sing, and he's a physical comedian on a par with Martin himself: one hilariously balletic bit he does with a footstool is worth the price of admission all by itself.   

[Originally published in May, 2004.]