The actors handle these situations movingly, and, for a while at least, we get a sense of the stakes involved in this desperate voyage to America. But the production, which is directed by Richard Hochberg, never gets past the emptiness at its heart. Even when the characters are talking about love or friendship, we seem to be listening to them from the distance. They seem to be talking underwater. There are moments in Murray Mednick's absurdist play 16 Routines , now at 2100 Square Feet as a Padua Playwrights Production, that crystallize into hilarity or lucidity, but mostly the play is one long non sequitur.
People talk at cross purposes, they carp insanely, they intellectualize mindlessly.
They throw in references to characters who never appear. Violence and Judaism. Sometimes, at awkward moments, an offstage voice prompts them. No, it's not a real stage manager prompting real actors. Mednick's characters are supposed to be the denizens of an actors home and the home's support staff.