Photo/Joan MarcusI'm convinced that Rapp is, beneath his blustery exterior, an extremely creative and talented playwright, but this latest piece, Bingo With the Indians, is half Cecil B. Demented, half Dead Man (a sort of hyperviolent raunchiness that somehow manages to remain quietly thoughtful), but fully awful. I want to turn Rapp's profanity back on him and let him tongue-fuck my ass: all that good acting, turned to shock value and an alienating study of the strange. And I really want to like this play, this concept of otherness at the heart of these twisted actors-cum-burglars. I enjoy the quiet moments between the subversive Wilson (Rob Yang) and the helpless Steve (Evan Enderle), and think Rapp's staging of a controversially graphic semi-rape is beautifully done. But I can't contend with this cool severance of emotion, this way in which Rapp just "smiles" and "unsmiles" and expects us all to be there right beside him. No, ultimately Bingo With the Indians is not a a play, nor even a Bingo; it is just a series of stray dots that happen to closely approximate a dramatic thought.
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