A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

With A Clockwork Orange, Joe Tatano and Goldlight Theater Company firmly establish themselves in the front ranks of New York’s off-off-Broadway theatre community. Working on a tiny stage that’s about the size of my kitchen, they take audiences into Anthony Burgess’ scary world, a dark and dangerous place where bright fevered youth (or, more accurately, the youth of mid-20th century “Milk Bar” society) revel in violence and chaos.

At the center of it all is an extraordinary performance by David L. Epstein, who plays Alex, the teenage thug who is A Clockwork Orange’s protagonist and narrator. Alex begins his story in a milk bar, a gathering place for young hoodlums like himself, where the evening’s entertainment is brutality and terror. His gang wreaks havoc on random victims before he is arrested and jailed.

We get quick glimpses of Alex’s home life with a pair of utterly indifferent parents, and of his already clocked juvenile record when his parole officer, a menacing fellow named Deltoid, checks in on him. The only thing Alex loves more than violence is the music of Beethoven, which he listens to with religious devotion.

A couple of years later, Alex gets a chance for early release, via an experimental program sponsored by a ruthless scientist named Dr. Brodsky. Alex is brainwashed by being forced to watch films of acts of the most horrifying violence imaginable while being injected with drugs that make him violently ill. Soon the mere thought of violence makes Alex violently ill as well.

The play is a surprisingly powerful theatrical experience. The staging is imaginative, the ensemble strong, and the energy palpable. Goldlight Theatre Company has created a striking theatrical event, and the performance lingers in the mind long after the final scene.