'Lamb': A maddening, magical grown up fairy tale
David Lamb's world is imploding. His wife has kicked him out, forcing him to live in a cheap motel on the outskirts of town. His father, a gruff, bitter old man, has just died. And his boss (Joel Murray) has told him to take time off after finding out David has been fooling around with a coworker 20 years his junior (Jess Weixler).
David Lamb's world is imploding.
His wife has kicked him out, forcing him to live in a cheap motel on the outskirts of town. His father, a gruff, bitter old man, has just died. And his boss (Joel Murray) has told him to take time off after finding out David has been fooling around with a coworker 20 years his junior (Jess Weixler).
Directed by Ross Partridge, who also plays the titular antihero, Lamb is a deeply disturbing, maddening, shocking, and yet also utterly magical grown-up fairy tale for the postindustrial age.
It opens in a sort of Inferno, an industrial area on the outskirts of Denver, littered with half-empty strip malls, industrial parks, battered warehouses, and crisscrossing highway on-ramps.
One day, David finds the answer to his troubles when an 11-year-old girl named Tommie (Tony Award winner Oona Laurence) asks him for a cigarette. When she tells David her friends dared her to approach him, David tells her she can get back at them by pretending he's kidnapping her.
And so he does, heaving her tiny, thin body into the front seat and taking off.
The shock takes some time to sink in: Here's this pathetic man the audience has come to pity, if not care about, and he turns out to be a child predator?
Not quite. At least not yet.
David is kind and sweet, not for a second patronizing, as he asks her to give him directions to her home. It dawns on the viewer he may see this child as a potential friend. Surely not.
Laurence is the model of restraint and self-assurance as Tommie, a neglected kid with absentee parents who would rather watch TV than take care of her.
David shows up again the next day and the day after as the mismatched pair develop a sort of friendship.
It's a charming, strange, transgressive, undefinable friendship, and we keep expecting catastrophe to strike: Surely, he's grooming her?
Partridge portrays David with immaculate timing and meticulous attention to detail. We feel for the character's pain, but never quite trust him.
Then things get downright strange when David takes Tommie for a weeklong stay at his dad's cabin in rural Wyoming. The car ride intensifies their bond, as does their stay in an American pastoral Paradiso, the countryside David somehow believes will wash him of his pain - or his sins.
215-854-2736
Lamb *** (out of four stars)
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Directed by Ross Partridge. With Partridge, Oona Laurence, Jess Weixler, Tom Bower. Distributed by The Orchard.
Running time: 1 hour, 36 mins.
Parent's guide: Not rated (disturbing adult themes, profanity, smoking).
Playing at: PFS at the Roxy Theater.
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