“We’re grapes. We talk. It’s what we do,” says Donald, one of the two loquacious grapes (played by Gabe Greenspan and Tommy Bazarian) in Zeke Blackwell’s rambling play. Still Life truly is just two grapes talking, about a wide variety of topics: theoretical triple-helix DNA, the weight of a grain of sand, the nature of identity, the idea of the self. The play’s tangential musings seem more like a conversation between erudite stoners than a compelling absurdist drama— both James and John Watson are referenced, but the grapes also discuss “the sound of queso”—and in the second half, the absurdist trappings are displaced by portentous philosophizing and fabricated conflict. That’s a shame, because when Blackwell focuses on the quotidian details of grape life—including bigoted grape jokes and the fear of “the man with the bucket”—there is some nice wit and clever world-building. More often, however, Still Life falls into self-important profundity and a compulsion to squeeze every possible pun from the concept. In the latter spirit, one might say that the play dies on the vine.—Austin Ruffer
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