James Kautz, Dee Roscioli, and Anthony Rapp star as three best friends with some complicated issues in Chris Henry’s DEDALUS LOUNGE
Interart Theatre Annex
500 West 52nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Extended through February 2, $18
www.royalfamilyproductions.org
The holidays can be a lonely time of year, a chance for people to “sit back and relax and really explore the pain in your life,” Danny points out early on in Gary Duggan’s entertaining and involving Dedalus Lounge. The ninety-minute play is set in a Dublin pub, where longtime best friends Danny (Rent’s Anthony Rapp), Delphine (Wicked’s Dee Roscioli), and Daragh (Amoralists artistic director and cofounder James Kautz) commiserate about life and love as Christmas and New Year’s Eve approaches. Danny, whose dream is to put together a Queen tribute band, has just broken up with his girlfriend. Delphine, who has just been promoted at work, is considering seeing a married member of Parliament. And Daragh — well, Daragh is a grungy ne’er-do-well who does just about whatever he pleases, regardless of the consequences. Their discussions are regularly interceded by the two bartenders (Curtis Howard and Heather Phillips) suddenly breaking out into beautifully choreographed dances (by JoAnn M. Hunter) that heighten the emotional drama in organic ways, particularly Phillips’s lithe, balletic movement. In addition, characters sometimes address the audience directly, and Danny occasionally bursts out into his Freddie Mercury impersonation, belting out such original songs as “More” and “The End” in all his glam-rock glory as films of the real Queen are projected behind him. (The producers couldn’t get the rights to use actual Queen tunes, so Rapp and Daniel A. Weiss wrote new songs for the show.) Directed by Chris Henry, who takes full advantage of the small black-box theater, the Interart/Royal Family production of Dedalus Lounge, a hit at the 2006 Dublin Fringe Festival, is a well-acted, tasty little treat, a late Christmas present that arrives just in time to save adventurous theatergoers from the post-holiday doldrums.