Subtitled “a fable with songs,” Sign in the Six O’ Clock Sky is about four sideshow performers from 1933 who find themselves in a time warp, not knowing how they got there. Combining a circus sideshow with the word surreal usually gets my attention so I decided to see this premiere at the Theater for the New City. The set by Sonya Plenefisch is promising. Is this the moon? A rocky beach?
Posters for three performers are displayed. One act is the human pin cushion, another the strongman (Robert Homeyer and Michael Giorgio). The lady is billed as Aphrodite (Jessica Lorion). After a dreamy opening, four stranded people are lamenting that time is so old and slow. They are clearly past their physical prime. The Great Depression has made their lives miserable. “We’re just two slices of bologna away from a bread line.” “He’s a snail’s breath away from panic.” Are they lost? Dead? Part of a mass hysteria? Punished for breaking the rules?
While trying to figure that out, they rehearse musical numbers from their show with the blind piano-playing Dr. Raven (David Shakopi). The first one of Dan Furman’s songs is a ditty about “strolling down the avenue.” Why is the human pin cushion also a song and dance man? No idea. Back to the story. Are they on an island? They do a quick search but learn nothing. A young Wall Street CEO (Michael A. Green) arrives in a business suit carrying a cell phone which is not working. What started as mysterious (if nonsensical) immediately embraces the ridiculous.
Written by twice Oscar nominated screenwriter Arnold Schulman (Love With the Proper Stranger and Goodbye, Columbus), the philosophical mumbo-jumbo gets thick and preposterous fast. One dimensional characters recite lines meant to be reflective but just sound banal. The Wall Street guy makes his fortune buying and selling numbers. “No one will deal with me if I didn’t have an $80,000 watch.” He’s from 2019 and, after meeting his fellow strandees, he reconsiders his historical understanding of the depression. “I had no idea it impacted real people.” If this were farce rather than deadly serious, perhaps these stereotypes might be worth a chuckle.
Oddly and improbably, Mr. Money falls hard and fast for Aphrodite, a self-described whore who proclaims “I look at men the way a cow looks at butchers.” How can these two find a common ground for love? “Without whores and corruption, nothing in this world would ever get done.” Director Sheila Xoregos (of the Xoregos Performing Company) has this cast playing this as serious drama. I would rethink the plan completely. Imagine the reaction this psychobabble would receive if Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy were inhabiting these people as bizarre cartoons.
Alas, that is not the case. More than half of the audience left at intermission. This particular smorgasbord of the human condition has it all: alcoholism, prostitution, depression, blindness, the occult and repentance. They talk and talk and talk. Someone finally says “What is a real conversation anyway?” One is not to be found in this play.
For those who skipped the second act, you missed “like Kafka, l live only to find the deep hidden yes underneath the no.” The reply: “if you really look under the no, you’ll find something delicious.” The latter stages of the play include a twist of sorts which comes far too late despite a solid portrayal by Michael Neal Johnson.
What is the sign in the six o’clock sky? Another unneeded song repeats the line “I Claim the Night” and ponders windows in the sky. “Why don’t I ever understand a thing you say?” best describes this complete misfire of a play.