Mitchell is also fun as she talks about preparing her taffeta dress and new shoes for the big occasion and affects a similarly self-contained and oblivious persona. Having been primed by the first two pieces, the audience of course expects all of this vacuousness to be subverted, and it is. The expectation of horror underlies the descriptions of mundane activities, making our reaction to these stories of college hijinks one of equal discomfort and disgust to that which follows when the atrocity itself occurs. The play's title is brought into effect again as the male and several of his friends beat a gay man to death in a public toilet in Central Park. The fact that their crime is followed by a prayer serves to again reinforce a sense of hypocrisy and mixed motivation, or at least fathomable if intolerable justification.
Bash is a serious and absorbing work of theatre.
It has been running since 1999 on stages around the U.S. and was filmed for Showtime in 2000. The Dublin production is well designed, crisply lit, and superbly performed. As a play in itself it is thought-provoking, refusing to provide easy answers and mercifully not opting for postmodern amorality in dealing with these themes.