Thom Pain (based on nothing)

One man, one act, one hour (give or take). Will Eno’s 2005 play Thom Pain (based on nothing) starts with a funny gag, then waffles quite a bit, and by the end you’re not sure how you felt, only that you might have felt something. Maybe. It’s a tricky show to stage, mostly because the character isn’t necessarily a guy that you want to hear talking at you for more than a few minutes. The skinny tie, the digressions with digressions, the repeated mentions of a raffle that will never happen — Jeff Church’s character is a little too self-conscious to make any sense, although that might also be the point. Church and director Vince Petronio clearly gave this one a lot of thought, though there’s not a ton of payoff for the audience.