Chicago Reader, January 23, 1998
NARCISSUS AND ECHO
Jack Helbig
Emanon Theater Company, at Mayer Kaplan Jewish Community Center.
In his holiday comedy The Eight: Reindeer Monologues, playwright Jeff Goode plays the
iconoclast, revealing the dark side of the Jolly Old Elf. And in Narcissus and Echo, written two
years before The Eight, he attempts a similar trick. He and songwriter Larrance Fingerhut turn all
the major figures in the classic Greek myth--about a callow youth who spurns the love of the
sweet libidinous nymph Echo--into broad caricatures, effectively transforming the story into a
90-minute fractured fairy tale. Their irreverent look at the classic is quite funny,
though Goode and Fingerhut's best moments have almost nothing to do with the myth. Goode's
best material revolves around Cupid, who narrates: he's revealed to be not the cuddly cherub of
candy boxes or the youthful hunk of Renaissance paintings but a crabby middle-aged man
(brilliantly played by Phil Gigante) frankly tired of the romance biz. Likewise Fingerhut's best
song is a clever little ditty, "Around and Around," strongly reminiscent of Jacques Brel, wittily
squeezing all of Aeschylus' tragic Oresteia into a four-minute song.