“The theatre is gone, but there are new things now,” says Matthew Broderick in Wallace Shawn’s chilling comedy, which imagines a dystopian but familiar society where former theatre people have gone on to television, or to a day job, such as murderer. “My paycheck arrives with complete regularity,” says an ex wardrobe supervisor turned assassin.

…The wit and the horror of Shawn’s play is how, amid the kind of gossip, backbiting and nostalgic reminiscences standard from old troupers everywhere, the characters casually segue into conversations about “targeting” – killing people deemed undesirable.

Full review at DC Theatre Scene

Click on any photograph by Monique Carboni to see it enlarged

Matthew Broderick and Wallace Shawn in Shawn’s Evening at the Talk House

L-R: John Epperson, Matthew Broderick, Jill Eikenberry, Annapurna Sriram, Larry Pine, Claudia Shear

Clockwise: Matthew Broderick, Annapurna Sriram, Jill Eikenberry, Wallace Shawn, John Epperson, Claudia Shear, Michael Tucker

Jill Eikenberry, Larry Pine, Claudia Shear, Michael Tucker

L-R: Matthew Broderick, Annapurna Sriram, Michael Tucker, John Epperson

L-R: Michael Tucker, Matthew Broderick, Wallace Shawn and Jill Eikenberry

Wallace Shawn in his play Evening at the Talk House

Matthew Broderick & Annapurna Sriram in Wallace Shawn’s “Evening at the Talk House,” directed by Scott Elliott, Off-Broadway at The New Group. Through March 12 at The Pershing Square Signature Center.