Apple Girl enjoyed a night out the theatre last night with her actress-singer-playwright friend Susan, from PlayGroup. For the very un-Gotham price of $27.50 we saw a brilliant two-hander called The Receipt, which arrived in New York direct from Melbourne’s International Comedy Festival.
In The Receipt Will Adamsdale and sonic artist/performer Chris Branch chronicle of the story of Alan Wiley, a downtrodden resident and confused office worker of a city called “Glondon”, who finds a receipt on the street one day and sets out to find the anonymous consumer for whom the receipt was issued. Wiley’s ultimately futile quest is emblematic of the search for meaning in the relentless daily routines of the late-capitalist consumer.
This moving and very funny play won the 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe First Award and the Total Theatre Award for Innovation. In his www.gothamist.com review John del Signore said: “The Receipt is one of those precious shows that makes up for all the lackluster stuff a theatergoer has to sift through in search of gold. Adamsdale and Branch deftly take something as prosaic as a receipt and, using nothing but sound, a few filing cabinets, and their imaginations, conjure pure delight from the banal.”
