It's an eccentric and here brutally tedious exposition. Carrying an audience's attention through it requires cunning, and there is none in evidence here. I have noticed over the years that throwing up onstage is not a good way to endear an audience. This is the notable feature of the unsettling Cosmo's entrance, followed in short order by the equally discomfiting sight of Presley cleaning up the mess. What follows is a bizarre chess match that is occasionally unpleasant to witness, even from the audience, but that can be spellbinding.
Pitchfork plays a bit like a mystery in which the clues are carefully hidden, and never revealed.
More fundamentally, Ridley simply causes us to wonder what it is we are seeing, and fret over it as we might over the meaning of our dreams. This production is directed by Rob Bundy, who directed the Woolly Mammoth version and has directed a third staging as well. He knows where the markers are, and hits them, but he is not able to guide the actors to performances that exploit them. Ridley's leaden speeches bore. Hawley's rendition of Haley's most memorable scene, delivered with enough spirit to provoke applause, nonetheless fall flat in the desert in which it finds itself.