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Culture Stage

Fringe Review: Blind to Happiness

BLIND TO HAPPINESS by Tim C. Murphy. Annex Theatre. July 3 at 6:15 pm, July 4 at 1 pm, July 5 at 2:15 pm, July 6 at 3:30 pm, July 8 at 9:45 pm, July 9 at 7:30 pm. Buy tickets. Rating: NNN


Blind To Happiness is a solo show that doesn’t feel like one thanks to a cast of deftly cross-referenced characters straight from the fertile mind of writer/performer Tim C. Murphy.

In a nameless town, a depressed yet resilient dishwasher nicknamed Couks is employed at the same restaurant as poet/line-cook Bliss and academic/server Mike. The working class colleagues serve to illustrate Murphy’s theories about positive psychology and human blind spots. Lesser characters – female love interests, bosses, Couks’s mother, father and cat – come and go.

Murphy’s strength is breathing just enough life into all of his wildly diverse characters, no matter how minor. And because these people are mostly serial screw-ups who never give up, the work is often both moving and awkwardly funny.

Even so, I was irritated by the fuzzy treatment of the work’s central provocative question: “Is happiness a choice?”  Murphy is smart enough to not answer it directly, but I wish he grappled with it with a bit more depth.

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