Goodbye April, Hello May is like the quiet kid on the debate team: he makes good observations, but they go unheard in a sea of more aggressively pitched ideas. What's worse for Ethan Lipton's piece is that it's meant to be comic, something that's hard to do when you're this passive. Shows that succeed in this vein, like the recently alienating God's Ear and The Internationalist, do so on the strength of a consistent tone and a few overblown characters. You'd think that having Gibson Frazier (who was in both of those shows) would help, but unless he's given something outrageous to do (as in the opening, where he describes shooting a seven-year-old), he's just shooting the breeze with the rest of the cast. Those few slivers of Lipton gold are good, but they're drowned out by the bland narrative, unnecessary intermission, and overwrought staging.
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