‘Insect Play’ puts human nature under microscope in dark comedy

By Joe Brown

Thursday, April 16, 2009 | 2 a.m.

An offbeat, earthy variant of the Alice in Wonderland setup, “The Insect Play” is a grimly amusing little dystopian satire that holds a magnifying glass to the ruthlessness of nature — human nature certainly not excepted — and the futility of most of our vainglorious exertions, including art itself.

Karel Capek is an influential Czech writer who introduced the word “robot” to the world in his 1920 play “R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots),” and his 1922 “Insect” continues to mine the furious and funny vein of political, class and economic satire running through the Insurgo Theatre Movement’s offerings this season, including the Kafka exploration of “Morphotic,” “Trojan Women 2.0” and the over-obvious recent “Cartoon,” and the righteous and unforgettable pocket epic that was “Henry V.”

In “Insect,” a down-and-out tramp (Samuel Francis Craner III) accidentally tipples some cyanide and wakes up in a psychedelic landscape populated by epicene, syrup-sipping butterflies, obliviously obsessed with beauty, sex and status. In Act 2 he digs deeper among the pests and parasites, including a pair of dung beetles who coo Gollum-like over their precious ball of poop, their life savings. While their hard-won capital is being stolen right from under their noses, their only dream is to collect and hoard another “little pile.”

Act 3 finds the tramp amid the martial microcosm of the red ants, a fascistic and industrial-military corporate complex in mindless fealty to an unseen queen. Barking out frantic orders to the drones, Chief Engineer ant (John Beane) and his amanuensis 2nd Engineer (Natascha Negro) grow positively teary-eyed with joy when, after some increasingly contorted and distorted logic, they decree that “a war is forced upon us!” and they send their troops to a no-prisoners battle with the yellow ants over the space between two blades of glass.

Through most of the second and third acts, a radiant Chrysalis (Breon Jenay) struggles slowly and poignantly to shed her cocoon toward her glorious metamorphosis, musing ecstatically abut the obviously radiant reason for her impending rebirth.

With its hand-painted drops and props and its witty assemblage of makeshift costumes, the staging of “Insect” is a cheerful bit of underground agitprop, broadly pitched by director Brandon McClenahan somewhere between an elementary school pageant and a “Monty Python” sketch.

The cast of 14 doubles and triples up on roles, and some of the smallest parts earn the biggest laughs. Michael Drake is a standout, creating three distinct, funny and affecting characters as a poetic butterfly, a fastidious cricket and a wounded ant soldier.

It’s a real pleasure to see Insurgo director Beane back on stage, acting up a hilarious, furious storm in dual roles, and his chemistry and interplay with Negro, one of the most consistently intriguing actresses in town, makes “Insect” one to catch.