Theater Review - MEDS: Hopped up

Out of Hand Theater fills its prescription

A generation ago, an energetic young theater’s surreal, anti-corporate play about drugs would have advocated tuning in and turning on. Today, Out of Hand Theater’s world premiere of MEDS uses madcap invention to critique the drug culture – specifically, the pharmaceutical industry and the idea of less-depressed living through chemistry.

With Out of Hand’s characteristic prankishness, MEDS begins by filing the audience into a narrow space that literally emulates a doctor’s crowded waiting room, in which the actors mingle with us “patients.” Without giving away the show’s best stunt, the space transforms into “Pharmaland,” a musical, phantasmagorical locale that represents both a huge drug company and our pill-popping nation. Musical director Geoff Uterhardt’s pimped-out president serves as the Willy Wonka of this particular wonderland, with Jeffrey Zwartjes’ everyman janitor trying to figure out where he fits in.

Directed by Maia Knispel and created by the ensemble, MEDS mixes commercial spoofs, boxing matches, perky songs, testimonials and pro-drug industry cheers: Ariel de Man and Brian Crawford play college-style cheerleaders who list the diseases that drugs can defeat – provided you have health insurance. Matt Huff portrays a doctor as a white-caped stage magician who uses some old-fashioned tricks to affirm the “magic” of medicine. Huff’s confident patter and easy interplay with the audience (“Please, anonymously raise your hands”) make him MEDS’ most distinctive performer.

Part of the appeal of MEDS is simply seeing playful, politically conscious guerrilla theater that is not about the Iraq war or some aspect of the post-9/11 political landscape. Not that those issues aren’t worth exploring, but, like Michael Moore’s recent documentary Sicko (not to mention Out of Hand’s 2004 self-improvement spoof Help!), MEDS finds other ailments worth diagnosing in the body politic.

MEDS uses creative comedy to attack the dark side of antidepressants and the medical industry, but at times the show proves a little too zany for its own good. Physical and mental health problems tend to be innately private experiences, and the impersonal nature of MEDS’ humor can get in the way of some deeper emotions. Nevertheless, the comedy manages to be both disturbing and funny. Laughter is supposedly the best medicine – but try to tell that to your HMO.

MEDS. Through Nov. 18. $15-$45. Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 5 p.m. Out of Hand Theater, New Street Arts, 121 New St., Decatur. 404-522-6194. www.outofhandtheater.com.