Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

At it's best, "Jump/Rope," a play by writer-performer John Kuntz that premiered in Boston, is a small but sure shaggy dog play in the tradition of Edward Albee. Take Tobias' monologue about his cat in "A Delicate Balance" and multiply it by twenty, and you have most of "Jump/Rope," which abounds in tangents and reveries. There is even a direct reference to Albee's "Zoo Story" in the first meeting of two of the three characters. The play is dependent on Kuntz's personal charm as a performer, which is considerable: as Kurt, a man who is unlucky in love, Kuntz has a dry, adorable way of talking to the audience that gets us over many potholes in his narrative. The sound design by Michael Bogden, which features a lot of Blondie songs, is fetching, as is the set by Arnulfo Maldonado, and the ménage a trois between Kuntz and his fellow players, Nathan Flower and Bill Mootos, is well acted and has a pleasing theatricality, especially as the drama between them accelerates.

Unfortunately, Kuntz chooses to end his ruminations on love and fidelity with a gruesome plot twist that has been planted all along, but still makes you feel like a sucker for caring about the people on stage. "Jump/Rope" winds up as a tawdry little shocker, when what it really seems to want to be is a simple story of colorful experience and faded love. Commercial cop-out“ Irresistible urge? Careful planning? It's difficult to tell what Kuntz's original intention might have been, but his central performance and the freshness of the opening/mid-section material deserves better than a slick Grande Guignol finish.