EPIPHANY

by Carlino, Lewis John

This is a play about a man who has failed so miserably as a man, that he decides to become a chicken, a rooster. His wife, a successful advertising executive, taunts him with memories of his failures, memories that include a homosexual experience she witnessed between her husband and another man. Years have gone by since this occurrence and her husband, driven by his inability to assume the dominating role and by his wife’s constant undercutting and reminders of the incident, plans horrible revenge. The play is a mixture of savage humor that gradually turns to horror as the man, donning a steel beak, begins his metamorphosis, his epiphany into a rooster, so that he may completely rule. He locks the bedroom door and then proceeds to assemble a roost on which he perches and gives orders. Just as all seems to be going in his favor, he has a grotesque demise. He ventures a rooster crow, but does not quite make it. Suddenly, his body contorts. He screams in agony. An egg drops from under him. His wife comforts him by saying it’s really what he always wanted. The play ends in a sort of Gothic horror as his wife tears off his paper coxcomb and accepts him as her little “Henny Penny.”