Having read so much advance information about Bob, the picaresque comedy/drama about the title character's birth and abandonment in a White Castle restroom in Louisville, just down the street from Actors Theatre, I eagerly anticipated seeing it. But, despite its dogged eagerness to please, the play falls short of expectations of a new take on the so-called American Dream.
Bob, amusingly directed by ATL associate artistic director Sean Daniels, has wonderfully quirky and comic touches and a quintet of remarkably versatile actors to recount Bob's mythical adventures with their highs and lows a la "Candide" and "Tristram Shandy." Jeffrey Binder superlatively conjures Bob at all ages. The other four, billed as Chorus 1 through 4, shape shift in and out of multiple characters that Bob meets in his various phases.
Lonely orphan Bob is spirited away from his birthplace by a kindly waitress who drives him all over the U.S. to educate him about people and places and then dies, leaving him with a car and some money in a pillowcase. His favorite monument is Mt. Rushmore where he wants his sculptured face to be added someday after he becomes "a great man."
