These Seven Sicknesses Returns

These Seven Sicknesses, which I loved when it opened in January (my review) returns to The Flea Theater, June 6 to July 1.

Like no dinner theater you’ve seen before, the marathon evening is playwright Sean Graney’s adaptation of all seven of Sophocles’ surviving plays—Oedipus, In Trachis, Philoktetes, In Colonus, Ajax, Elektra and Antigone – performed by the Bats, the resident company of The Flea made up of energetic, young, and let’s face it, sexy actors, who, in-between the gore and the emotions, act as our hosts and waiters, surviving first dinner and then dessert from local eateries.

Attention has been unusual for an Off-Off Broadway show; its director, Ed Sylvanus Iskandar,has been nominated for a Drama Desk Award — along with Mike Nichols for Death of A Salesman, Sam Mendes for Richard III, David Cromer for Tribes, etc.

At a reception for the nominees, I asked Iskander when he knew he would make a life in the theater. His teacher assigned him to see “A Doll’s House” on The West End when he was about 12 years old, and it showed him the possibilities. “Before that, I was going to be a lawyer.”