The Village Voice August 12, 1997
Things Unsaid

Billed as a comedy, David Caudle’s Hell’s Cuisinart (Samuel Beckett Theater) never reaches the laugh-riot stage. But these five perceptive playlets – a Rear Window-like look at the goings-on in a quintet of Hell’s Kitchen studio apartments—often surprises with their mystifying aura, their dramatic punch. Helena Handbasket, in particular, sets a Hitchcockian mood—it’s an eerie, at times painful study of alienation in a six-year marriage, carried beautifully to a shock ending by Leslie Nipkow’s performance. A Part, an actor’s phone call to a distant father who’s not the least interested but does send money whether it’s wanted or not, is no less heartbreaking, though more hopeful. The evening peaks with Jolly Roger, a seriocomic confrontation about outing that answers the age-old question, What happens when one partner in a gay couple gets injured stabbing himself in the eye with his lover’s cockring? The overall theme is the lack of communication, the pain that results from things unsaid. Hell’s Cuisinart says them.
TOM KERTES