THE THEATRE THE HUMAN COMEDY

Off Of Broadway serves up FOOD,” Redwood,” and Faust.”

- HELEN SHAW

The night that I saw Geoff Sobelle’s “FOOD,” something went wrong—and thank heavens it did. Sobelle is a superb clown, which is another way of saying that he’s in his element when things are going sideways. (Clowns, at least physical comedians like Laurel and Hardy or Buster Keaton, tend to choose the silly, self-defeating path, so any obstacle just makes a task clownier.) Sobelle’s one-man production, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Fishman Space, takes place around a massive square table, maybe twenty feet on each side, set with dinner plates, silverware, and a white tablecloth. Thirty audience members are allowed to pull up a chair, while the rest of us sit in theatre seats banked high on three sides. Sobelle is our maître d’, and his affable, unfailingly polite expression exudes patience as his guests foil his attempts to make the evening go smoothly. The pressure builds; his tolerance visibly increases. It’s delicious.