Goat is best part of ‘O Lovely Glowworm’ play

Everyone is searching for something of meaning in their lives – truth, pure love or just plain happiness. What if you were a stuffed animatronic goat? What would you be looking for then? “O Lovely Glowworm,” which opened this Friday at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater, tried with all its strength to answer these invaluable questions.\n“O Lovely Glowworm,” written by Glen Berger, is the story of a goat trying to figure out the meaning of his existence in accordance with who or what he is. The goat imagines what he calls “great scenes of beauty” to help explain his existential conundrum. These “scenes” range from a battlefront in World War I to a mermaid sitting in the lake of its youth.\nFrom everything that was said prior to my viewing of the show, I expected it to be a brilliantly moving production. The only moving that occurred was quite a number of people leaving at the end of act one. To be honest, leaving was understandable. Many of the same physical and vocal jokes had been played to the point they were tedious and unnerving. \nThe audience started to grow restless and bored with a hand-to-hand fight sequence that lasted more than three minutes. It seemed as if someone had run out of new things to do and just repeated the same action that got a laugh. Case in point, a young man is swimming out to the aforementioned mermaid when the undertow pulls him down and he miraculously fights his way to the surface, only to be pulled down again. Repeat this scene about a dozen times. \nI’m happy to note that not all of the show was a tedious challenge to sit through. The Goat, performed by Henry Woronicz, was simply stunning. Everything the Goat said was wonderful. But it was the man behind the mechanical goat where the true magic laid, portraying all the people or things the Goat thought he was until he accepted that he was, in fact, a goat. Woronicz kept the audience thinking and roaring with laughter.\n“O Lovely Glowworm” will play at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater. There will be a 2 p.m. matinee Saturday. Tickets are $19 for adults and $13 for students. Tickets are available through the Buskirk-Chumley Theater Web site, www.buskirkchumley.org.