Word: lite
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GOOD THEATER is not always entertaining. A Nite-Lite, a one-act play by Townsend Gorey, is a provocative drama which addresses the issue of the homeless in a profoundly disturbing, and often disgusting manner...
Like last year's film Blue Velvet, A Nite-Lite explores the seamy underside of human nature, forcing its audience to descend into the depths of perversity and look at what one character describes as "the part of the light that is dark." The play's action centers around a seemingly upstanding, All-American youth's sadistic abuse of a homeless person found asleep on his doorstep...
When we first meet the young protagonist of A Nite-Lite, acted with appropriate repulsiveness by the playwright, he is returning home from work, dressed respectably in suit and tie. His initial encounter with the motionless, battered body beside his front door arouses his sense of pity. He addresses the formless mass politely as "sir," and even brings out a plate of food. But as the homeless person fails to acknowledge these gestures, the young man grows increasingly annoyed and impatient. He begins throwing scraps of food at the human heap of rags and soon dumps the entire plate...
...boundless theatre-in-the-round sweeps his audience into the midst of the play's action. You can't help feeling that you are somehow participating in a sadistic scene--relegated to the ineffectual position of a voyeur. This is not a comfortable role to play, and A Nite-Lite is far from a comfortable theatrical experience...
Davis remains composed, but his emotion is evident. "We do not deal in Lite," he says with pride...