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'MATCH' MAKERS WANT YOU TO FIND THE THEME
By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
The Austin American-Statesman
Monday, September 19, 2005

Here's a challenge: figure out what "Match-Play," the new work by the Rude Mechanicals now at the Off Center, is all about and you could win $100. Or better yet? if you and the person sitting next to you and agree about what "Match-Play" is all about you could both win $100.

Here's the clincher though: It doesn't really matter.

"Match-Play" is a sometimes sweet, sometimes dark and absurd - and in a few places, profound - 75-minute theater-movement-language-visual spectacle that captivatingly plumbs the human experience.

The sources for this latest collaborative effort from the Rudes' Deborah Hay's meditative, improvisational dance, "The Match," staged earlier this year, and experimental playwright Richard Foreman's notebooks of random dialogue which are available on the Web for anyone to use. Kirk Lynn, the Rude Mechs playwright in residence, added sweet and absurd dialogue of his own to form the final script.

That liminal framework, combined with the Rude Mechs' skillful penchant for slapstick (OK, it's essentially whacky dancing) and arresting visual images, makes for a charming if bittersweet ride that finds four individuals (Lynn, Lana Lesley, Barney O'Hanlon and Shawn Sides), awkwardly negotiating their way through life. The quartet are a family of sorts - in the most modern sense, that is as they're roommates - whose connection is threatened by ... well, their inability to connect.

"There's a switch and all you to do is flick it and everything is fine, but it's awfully hard to find," a voice admonishes from offstage.

The Rude Mechs don't propose to know where to find that happiness switch, but while the players are looking, they bring us smart, humane, beautiful theater that will help the search.