Description: Two feuding brothers try to bring their late father’s ashes to a final resting place.

First Produced: 2004
Date Added: 11/8/2011
Content Advisory: strong language
Keywords: Comedy  Drama  Pop culture  Religion and spirituality  Dysfunctional families  Grief and mourning  Mostly Male Characters 
2 Acts, 80 Minutes
2 Females, 4 Males

A Note from the Editor:

Burning the Old Man received two 2005 New York Innovative Theatre Awards: for outstanding full-length script and outstanding supporting actress (Sara Thigpen as Jo).

NOTE: Burning the Old Man is fully protected by copyright law and is subject to royalty. All inquiries concerning production, publication, reprinting or use of this play in any form should be addressed to Scott D. Edwards of Harden Curtis Associates; email: scottedwards@hardencurtis.com; phone: 212-977-8429; mail: Scott D. Edwards, c/o Harden Curtis Associates, 850 Seventh Avenue, Suite 903, New York, NY 10019..

Original Production Information

Burning the Old Man was first presented by Boomerang Theatre Company (Tim Errickson, artistic director) at Center Stage, New York City, on September 10, 2004, with the following cast and credits:

Bobby: Brett Christiansen
Earth: Philip Emeott
Eddy: John C. Fitzmaurice
Candy: Christine Goodman
Marty: Timothy McCracken
Jo: Sara Thigpen

Director: Tim Errickson
Assistant Director: Christopher Thomasson
Sets: Harlan Penn
Costumes: Cheryl McCarron
Lights: Carrie Wood
Sound: Sarah Gromko

Review by Martin Denton

"Love is evil spelled backwards and wrong." So says Earth, an introspective New Age hippie who is one of the unlikely characters stuck for the night in a remote Nevada motel in Kelly McAllister's magnificent new play Burning the Old Man. He also says that most things in life "take short" (as opposed to long); he's a guy who is searching for words to live by. So is Marty, the play's central figure; he likes "This, too, shall pass" as a watch-cry.

If only things could be this easy. Right after Earth says what he says about love, his girlfriend Candy says, simply and quietly: "Not Always." Ah, as someone said: there's the rub. Burning the Old Man is about the "shall passes" and "take shorts" and "not alwayses" that comprise a life: the faulty ways we think we know other people and our inability to make ourselves known to others: the messy, funny, tragic consequences of choice, destiny, and inertia. Disarmingly intimate—six characters in a single setting in a 24-hour period—it's also enormously epic: in this, his third full-length play (after Last Call and Muse of Fire), McAllister tackles two of the most essential questions of the human experience. What are we doing here? And why do we have to leave?

Two brothers, Marty and Bobby, are on their way to the Burning Man festival, where they will deposit their late father's ashes, in accordance with his final wishes. Marty and Bobby are, if not exactly estranged, strangers to one another; they don't get along and this trip is not going smoothly. When Bobby carelessly drops a joint, he accidentally sets the car on fire; grabbing their father's remains and retrieving Bobby's backpack, they run into the desolate Delphi Motel in search of assistance. While they shout at each other, the car explodes; the impact takes out the telephone lines. With no around but the motel's sole employee, the spunky but subdued Jo, the men are stranded. And so they spend the day with Jo, who serves them Thai food and tries to find her old original cast albums (Bobby requests Sweeney Todd) and plays Trivial Pursuit with them while they fitfully quarrel and snipe at one another (and occasionally at her, too).

Help arrives in the unexpected persons of Candy and Earth, latter-day beatniks who are also on their way to the festival. They promise to take Marty, Bobby, and Dad's ashes with them the next morning—they don't drive after sundown—and in the interim proceed to shake everybody's foundations with their goofball profundity. Candy says she talks to the desert and the stars and Earth announces that telephones frighten him. The pair lead the others in a "vespers" service in which they say goodbye to the troubles of today and look toward the opportunities of tomorrow. Marty and Bobby share a rare moment of fraternal connection as they stifle their laughter, as if silently saying to each other "Can you believe these wackos?" But the transformations that Candy and Earth manage to bring about prove to be much deeper and more meaningful.

I won't tell you more about what happens except that Jo's scary bear of a husband, Eddy, also turns up, adding new complications to the escalating crisis that Marty and Bobby seem to be facing. The brothers share memories and recriminations as they try to figure out their father's life and what it meant to each of them; and also what their own lives might mean. McAllister doesn't believe in simple solutions or neat resolutions; he understands that human existence is a barrage of random stuff that can feel easy or hard depending on so many things, internal fortitude being just one (very significant) component. The result is a very grown-up drama about two men resisting growing up. The wisdom, compassion, and emotional resonance in Burning the Old Man bring to mind works as disparate as Shepard's True West, Greenberg's Three Days of Rain, and most of the plays of Eugene O'Neill (including Beyond the Horizon, with which this piece alternates in repertory at Boomerang Theatre Company).

Tim Errickson's production is superb, staged with economy and assurance. Harlan Penn's simple, rustic motel lobby set and Carrie Wood's naturalistic lighting provide a realistic backdrop for the almost magical events of Marty and Bobby's crazy day. (Cheryl McCarron's costumes, especially those for Candy and Earth, provide both realism and magic.) The actors are splendid: Brett Christiansen (Bobby) and Timothy McCracken (Marty) convince us decisively that they are brothers, for one thing, while very carefully and resolutely defining the complex personalities of these two very different siblings. Sara Thigpen is terrific as Jo, stealing our attention more than once with her brilliantly delineated reactions—this is a woman who doesn't often initiate events but rather makes the best of the cards she's dealt, and we understand that as we watch her gaze offstage at the brothers' car exploding, while the two men bicker obliviously. John C. Fitzmaurice is spot-on as the larger-than-life Eddy, a hulking bulldog of a man whose bark is so ferocious that we can't help but worry a little bit about his bite. As Candy and Earth, Christine Goodman and Philip Emeott are spectacularly good, revealing the essential earnestness and intelligence of this pair of hilariously dippy eccentrics.

Burning the Old Man is so warm and smart and compelling and entertaining that it's going to be hard for other new plays this fall to equal it; this is a show that producers ought to be checking out for a richly-deserved life following this too brief engagement at Center Stage. Full of humor and improbable occurrences and extraordinary characters and a humongous pile of questions, it's also full of answers, if you just listen and look in the right places. Like life...

review of the original production in 2004

Excerpt from Burning the Old Man

MARTY

Why do you think he wanted us to do this whole Burning Man thing?

BOBBY

To re-establish fraternal ties.

MARTY

I guess Dad wanted us to try and get along.

BOBBY

Like I said.

MARTY

So. Maybe we should try that.

BOBBY

Maybe we should.

MARTY

I don't really know how to speak to you anymore.

BOBBY

No shit. Why don't you tell me about the bender?

MARTY

Why do you always bring that up?

BOBBY

Because I know something happened with you and Dad, and I can't ask Dad about it, and he didn’t write about it in his journal.

MARTY

We just got drunk a lot and drove around Alaska. That's all. There wasn't anything else to do up there.

BOBBY

What about the woman?

MARTY

That was a mistake. We were down in Nenana, and I got to talking with this chick, and she was crazy, of course, but kind of cool. And sad. And we went for a drive down to see Denali. And things got physical in the back of the truck. And then shit happened.

BOBBY

So how did Dad know about it?

MARTY

Dad was there. Her husband had seen us talking, and followed us out. Dad saw what was going down, so he followed the dude. Me and the crazy chick had gotten to this campground near Denali, and were in the process of getting naked, when her husband knocked on the side of the truck and requested our presence. I got out, and immediately noticed that he had a gun.

BOBBY

No shit.

MARTY

Pointed right at me. And I think he was going to pull the trigger, but then up came Dad in his truck, and the dude got nervous- apparently he knew Dad. So, he went over to Dad's truck, and they talked for a long time. Quietly and intensely. And then Dad pulled out that shotgun he had, and pointed it at the dude's balls. I was sure he was going to kill him. After what seemed like the longest pause in the history of the world, the dude walked to his car and drove away. But not before I saw that he had pissed himself. And then we drove back to Nenana.

BOBBY

What happened to the girl?

MARTY

She still wanted to get it on. But I was kind of freaked out, and didn't feel like it. So I rode back with Dad.

BOBBY

What did Dad say?

MARTY

Nothing. We drove back in silence.

BOBBY

And was that the last night of the bender?

MARTY

No. The first.