If press releases are to be believed, no Bulgarian play has ever received a major New York City production until now.
And if the Bug Company’s “The Eyes of Others” is any indication, there’s good reason why.
Ivan Dimitrov’s play, translated by Angela Rodel, is the sort of deadpan absurdist comedy so popular in Eastern Europe, where real life has long bordered on the surreal. But this depiction of the relationship between two alienated, unnamed businessmen, who meet for hours each day in an empty city square, seems overly familiar.
The play is a love story of sorts between the men (Evan Zes and Michael Frederic), whose daily sojourns clearly mean more to them than their jobs, of which we learn few details, or even their personal lives. When one is forced to stay home with a bad cold, his phone conversation with his lonely buddy is far more tender than his interactions with his neglected wife (Danielle Skraastad).
“This single hour that I spend with you every Monday through Friday drives my week forward,” he tells him.
In his friend’s absence, the other man takes refuge from the cold in an underwear shop manned by a sexy shopgirl (a very funny Zoë Winters, of “4000 Miles”) whom he tries to impress by flashing his ultra-expensive Porsche watch.
There isn’t much more to the plot beyond the men’s desperate efforts to have a pizza delivered and their acknowledgment of the presence of a third (unseen) man who seems to be watching them from a distance. While there are a few genuinely amusing moments — the shopgirl tenderly caresses a briefs-clad sculpture of a male groin — most of the gags, like the old scatter-someone’s-ashes-in-the-wind scene, we’ve seen before.
“Happiness is possible only through the eyes of others,” someone says, in what passes for a half-baked attempt at profundity. Whether happiness is possible watching “The Eyes of Others” is another question.