"Underneath the Lintel" by Theater Latte Da at the Ritz Theater

I've seen Glen Berger's funny and profound little play Underneath the Lintel twice at the Minnesota Fringe Festival, brilliantly performed by local actor Pat O'Brien. What starts out as an amusing scavenger hunt around the world turns into a much deeper search for meaning in life. It's the last thing I expected Theater Latte Da to do, a company that doesn't do musical theater, they do theater musically. There was no music in this play that I remembered, other than a mention or two of a song. But in true Latte Da fashion, they've added music to this play (with the permission of the playwright), and made it better, deeper, richer. It's still the same quirky librarian searching for meaning (here played by a woman, another twist, that works beautifully), but with original music (composed by Frank London) that enhances the storytelling and helps the audience feel it more deeply.

Fringe Festival 2015: "Underneath the Lintel"

Day: 5

Show: 24

Title: Underneath the Lintel

Category: Comedy

By: Squirrel!

Written by: Glen Berger

Location: Ritz Theater Studio

Summary: A mild-mannered librarian goes on a quest that finds him traveling the world in search of the mythical Wandering Jew.

Highlights: Pat O'Brien brings his excellent one-man show back to the MN Fringe (I saw it four years ago). On the surface it's a funny and quirky little play about a Dutch librarian who becomes obsessed with a book that was returned 123 years after it was taken out. He follows a clue left in the book which leads him on a chase around the world, collecting even more clues. He's assembled and labeled all of the clues and gives us, his audience, an "Impressive Presentation of Lovely Evidences," using slides, audio recordings, and frantic scratchings on a flipchart to bolster his case that this man he's following is indeed the Wandering Jew, condemned to wander the earth, never resting, never dying. So you see it's not such a simple story after all, but a profound one that ponders the very big ideas of the meaning of life and death. Pat O'Brien, having performed the piece at festivals around the country, gives a masterful performance. From the moment he walks onstage about ten minutes before showtime, nervously setting up his display, he has us believing he is this man. He becomes increasingly more frazzled as the "presentation" goes on, urging us, or maybe himself, to believe... in something. Why are we here? Why do we die? How can we possibly know how one small choice made "underneath the lintel" can affect the rest of our lives? Pretty heavy stuff wrapped up in a quirky and funny little play.

Fringe Festival: "Underneath the Lintel" by Pat O'Brien's Vanity Theatrics at the U of M Rarig Center Arena

Underneath the Lintel is a beautiful, funny, profound one man show about a librarian who goes on a quest to investigate a long overdue book, which changes his life forever.  The man in question is TV and film vet Pat O'Brien, who gives a remarkable performance.  From the moment he walks onstage (about ten minutes before showtime, setting up a table, chair, and a few props), he creates a character so specific and real you believe he's a real person.  He's a stereotypical librarian - nervous, fastidious, precise.  He lives in an orderly world where nothing ever happens, until one day he finds a book that's over 100 years overdue in the night return slot.  The book is a travel guide filled with clues that get him to leave his small town in the Netherlands and travel the world.  A cleaner in London, a train in Germany, a P.O box in China.  He presents the "evidence" he has collected, all neatly numbered and labeled as a librarian would do.  When the clues lead him back hundreds of years, he begins to suspect that the man he is chasing is the mythical wandering Jew, condemned to wander the earth, never resting, never dying.

The librarian gets more and more agitated as his scavenger hunt leads him further and further down the road.  He takes a week's sick leave from his job and is gone for months.  When he finally returns to the library, he's fired.  Everything he knew and loved about his life is taken away and he's faced with an existential crisis.  Does the wandering Jew exist?  And what does that mean about life?  About God?  About why we're here?  Is life just Hobson's choice - no choice at all?  Underneath the lintel (which means doorway or entrance way) refers to the little choices we make that profoundly change our life, and we don't even realize it until much later.

In an afterword written by the playwright Glen Berger, he writes, "in the face of overwhelming existential bewilderment and terrible suffering, to respond with a little defiant dancing (in all its myriad forms) is a very human and very wondrous thing."  As is this play.

See all of my Fringe reviews.