Zero

Written by Danny O’Connor and Robert O’Connor

Directed by Kelly Fiore

Roy Arias Theater 2

616 9th Avenue

866-811-4111

 

Review by Bryan Clark

 

Zero is a hilarious, vulgar and entertaining show performed by Danny O’Connor and co-authored by his brother Robert O’Connor, an Iraq war veteran who died by his own hand. Mercifully, this play does not explore that suicide, though one of the characters blithely contemplates drinking bleach in response to his own generalized sense of failure — which, in this play, is a more potent trauma than active combat duty.

 

O’Connor is appealing in all six of his characters. Leonard is the baseline character, presumably closest to the actor’s sense of neutral. He hangs around with two friends from high school: Sam, a womanizing buffoon, and Alex, recently returned from service in Iraq. Two other characters are best friends: James, a hapless and genteel Southerner, and Gabe, a club-hopping stud who is a slicker version of Sam. There is also a brief and amusing appearance by Malthazar, an inept performance artist. 

 

 

Place Holder: Danny O'Connor pals around with himself in the hilarious Zero.

 

Alex delivers a vivid first-person account of a killing in Iraq, which we assume is a contribution from the late Robert O’Connor’s war experience. You might expect the powerful and disturbing speech to be the show-closer, but instead it appears in a drunken bar scene, undercutting the trap of high drama.

 

The near-continuous pop music underscoring is distracting and unnecessary, with the single exception of a huge comedy payoff in a bar scene lip-synch routine. The show is also excessively dependent on props, but, as with the music selections, O’Connor would be fine without them. He is a skilled soloist, deftly distinguishing the voices and mannerisms of the characters.

 

The trio of high school friends and the unrelated duo of best friends are awkwardly connected by the unseen woman “Mindy,” a device that fails to do its intended job of tying everything together. And only one of the characters experiences emotional growth, while the others either realize that they are “zeroes” or realize nothing at all. But these dramatic shortcomings do not reduce the strength and versatility of O’Connor’s consistently engaging performance.