Waiting for Bordeaux

James Daniel's absurdist play features a heterosexual female, a bisexual male, and a homosexual male meeting up in a pretentious restaurant for even more pretentious conversation about marriage, true art, and selling out. This grating take on existentialist drama borrows heavily from Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exitand Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, but it has none of the skill, subtlety, intelligence, or metaphysical weight of those masterpieces. L. Bose brings an appealing naturalism to the character of Hannah, and George Epsilanty musters a certain rakish charm as Gordon, yet their efforts are in vain. The self-consciously arty music by Pamela Z. feels like an undergraduate version of Laurie Anderson, the rudimentary technical elements are distracting, and the unimaginative riffs on creativity and cuisine are about as enjoyable as food poisoning.