Theater review: "Bullet for Adolph"

There is a saying that goes, “A lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client.” The same goes for theater. The disjointed, scatological comedy,”Bullet For Adolph,” written by television and movie actor Woody Harrelson and his friend Frankie Hyman, is also directed by Harrelson, who, undoubtedly invested in it as well. Perhaps if he hadn’t been so deeply involved in the play, both emotionally and financially, Harrelson would have seen what was wrong with it.

Zach (Brandon Coffey), a young man with a slight southern drawl (who seems to be Harrelson) is in Houston during the summer of 1983 working on a construction site. There, he meets Frankie (based on Hyman) and invites him to share the apartment he shares with Clint (David Coomber). The characters drink, curse, womanize and flip in and out of relationships. Dago-Czech (Lee Osorio) makes up the foursome of unlikable fellows. The characters forgive and forget easily and no one has an attention span long enough to be angry.

From the onset, you might find yourself wishing for earplugs. It’s not the loud 1980s music that is an assault on the senses; it is the pointless screeching of the characters that immediately alienates the audience. Dago opens the play with his shouting and later Clint joins in with laughter reminiscent of Tom Hulce as Mozart in “Amadeus.”

The one “adult” is Jurgen, a German foreman who owns a revolver that stalled when someone attempted to kill Hitler (hence the title). Jurgen has some interesting dialogue about the good that Hitler did for the German people (Ex- Volkswagen — the common man’s car). He is openly contemptuous of Blacks and characters use racial epithets. Things just happen in this play, but no one seems to know why or cares. So, why should we?

To badly paraphrase one of very few funny lines in the play, Clint wryly notes that of all the sperm that died, the only one that survived went to make the dislikable Dago. Just because Harrelson is a TV and movie star, his play “Bullet For Adolph” gets produced. So many plays don’t make it, yet Harrelson’s gets produced. Somehow it doesn’t seem fair.

For more information or tickets, visit http://www.bulletforadolf.com.