SARATOGA SPRINGS —The Saratoga Jewish Cultural Festival presents a one-woman show called “Underneath the Lintel” at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Aug. 28, at the Skidmore College Chapel.
Underneath the Lintel, a 2001 work by playwright Glen Berger, was reviewed as a truly funny and at the same time incredibly serious play on the universality of human experience. It transitions from a curious, narrowly focused detective story to an exploration of the most fundamental questions about life.
The basic plot of the play is simple. A librarian, played by Dianne O’Neil Filer, frequent Director at Home Made Theater and other community sites, comes upon a book, returned in a book slot, that is 123 years overdue. Thus begins a challenge to discover who had it, who now must pay the overdue charges, and where to find this individual.
But what starts out as a self-important attempt to impose the fine of a lifetime delves slowly and methodically into a manic pursuit of the truth behind a supernatural legend, and finally to an empirical exploration of the meager, yet unique, impact one lonely life can have on a universe large beyond our comprehension.
The librarian is transformed from a neat, properly dressed overbearing bureaucrat to a visibly sweaty and completely disheveled wanderer yearning for impossible answers to life’s basic questions.
Tickets are $10 and registration available at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., saratogajewishculturalfestival.org.
