Good Buzz for WASP and Bob Birdnow at FIT

by Elaine Liner

Dallas Observer

July 22, 2011

There's nice sting in Upstart Productions' staging of the surreal Steve Martin one-act W.A.S.P., one of the eight shows rotating on the schedule at the ongoing Festival of Independent Theatres at the Bath House Christopher Eastland as "Son" - Photo by Marc RouseCultural Center. The lights come up on a family at the dinner table. Stabbing madly at their empty plates, Mom (Diane Casey Box), Sis (Nicole Stewart) and Son (Christopher Eastland) listen attentively as Dad (Ted Wold) announces that heaven is 17 miles above the earth.

But wait, says Son, that would mean heaven is between the earth and the moon, which is about 240,000 miles farther away.

Uh, oh. Nobody can contradict Dad in this send-up of WASP-y nuclear families of the 1950s, like the type sent up in the film Pleasantville. With lots of funny lines that the cast lands with aplomb, W.A.S.P. gets its point across about narrow-minded thinking, hypocrisy and the emptiness of some American ideals. It couldn't be more topical in today's political climate.

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