Bash (Latterday Plays). When you walk into a Neil LaBute play, you figure that at some point there will be blood. With Bash (Latterday Plays) you get that blood three times over in a trio of monologues that always end badly for someone. Unfortunately, Crooked Mirror's production also manages to make that violence rather bloodless.
Of the three mini-plays - Iphigenia in Orem, A Gaggle of Saints and Medea Redux - only the final piece, featuring Charlotte Northeast as a latterday version of the mythic murderous mother, retains its resonance. That Northeast's performance is powerful as it is - from her flat Midwestern accent to her flattened demeanor - shows the depth of her empathy for this character. Iphigenia's Damon Bonetti is too bogged down in perfecting his businessman impression when he should instead be examining the narcissist inside the suit. And while Gaggle's Alyssa Kondracki and Derick Loafmann are believable individually as a pair of privileged prep school grads, their overlapping lines consistently fail to overlap and they never unite in the sort of mutual and committed self-delusion that makes this playlet so disturbing.