Anastasia Traina

THEATER REVIEW; Five One-Acts Depicting The Lives of The Entitled
By BRUCE WEBER for The New York TImes

 

 

The evening's appetizer, ''The Mystery at the Middle of Ordinary Life'' by Don DeLillo, is a blip of a vignette in which a wife wonders aloud in front of her perplexed husband how couples survive the inevitable banality of marriage. It's enlivened by the director, Anastasia Traina, who stages the conversation with the woman (Ali Marsh) stretching her back over a large beach ball and speaking with her face upside down to the audience, as the man (Joe LoTruglio) touches her as if initiating foreplay.
The brief script also contains a delicious one-liner. ''They make love,'' the husband says, responding to his wife with a shrug. ''They make salads.'' Maybe it's a two-liner.