TESTIMONY by Loretta Monaco runs at the Etcetera Theatre from August 10 to August 30, 2015.
Just an Act presents this sinister, existentialist play set in the basement cells of a Manhattan Criminal Court on the night of the 1987 Wall Street crash.
An impeccably dressed man shares a cell with a vagrant who wishes to make his acquaintance while they wait to see a judge. Their careless banter quickly turns to accusation and brutal assumptions about how the other half lives, witnessed by a guard who takes perverse pleasure in the tensions that escalate between the two men.
A nightmarish world of past crimes and misdemeanours unfolds when the court closes and the men realise they are locked in for the night.
Testimony mixes the language of dramatic realism with the brutal intensity of characters who embody the menacing air of a hapless New York.