Bingo With the Indians

A disgruntled East Village theater company with more on their minds than playing Bingo descends upon a small New England town. They plan a heist of the local church's cash box, but the night takes a darkly comic turn as things do not go as planned. "The ideas and sometimes the actors ricochet around the stage with such energy and scattershot purpose in Adam Rapp's BINGO WITH THE INDIANS that they might be in a pinball machine. A dark comedy that starts with a sitcom premise and finally invokes questions about the meaning of life, the play spins out of control, but that forgivable chaos comes from a writer who hasn't reined in his overabundance of ideas. The entire play is set in a shabby New England motel where three members of a New York theater group have arrived with a scheme: They'll steal the cash box from the local church bingo (it happens to be Indian night) and use the money to rent a performance space back home ... BINGO WITH THE INDIANS explores themes that run through other Rapp plays (most prominently, RED LIGHT WINTER; most recently, AMERICAN SLIGO): how far people will go to get what they want; how they face desires they barely knew they had; how grief seeps to the surface, and pent-up rage explodes." -Caryn James, The New York Times