IT’S a testament to mono logist Mike Daisey’s ir reverence that his recent show about regional theater was ominously titled “How Theater Failed America” while his current one – about the development of the atomic bomb and the state of national security in these scary times – bears the cheeky moniker “If You See Something Say Something.”
Like the best solo performers, Daisey has a talent for infusing his pieces with personal stories that further their themes in slyly humorous ways.
Here, for instance, an anecdote about being pickpocketed in Rome is delivered with the same breathless urgency as his scathing observations about the Patriot Act.
Structured around a visit he undertook to Los Alamos, where the original atomic bomb was developed and tested – “Inch by inch, it is the deadliest place on Earth,” he solemnly informs us – the piece is typically freewheeling and free-associative. But it is always highly entertaining, whether he is lambasting the uselessness of airport security measures (or, as he describes it, “security theater”), imagining George Washington’s probable reaction to the suspensions of civil liberties (“What the
f – – – !”), or relating the little-known story of Sam Cohen, the inventor of the neutron bomb.
At times, the performer – sweating profusely while seated Spalding Gray-style at a desk and occasionally glancing at his notes – sabotages the show’s effectiveness with his overemphatic delivery. While the approach reaped comic dividends in such earlier piece as “21 Dog Years,” his account of working at Amazon.com, here it often works against the seriousness of the material.
But despite its flaws and occasionally rambling style, “If You See Something Say Something” succeeds in delivering observations about its important subject that are as entertaining as they are thought-provoking.
IF YOU SEE SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING