Brynn Thayer stands before her father's flag-draped coffin. Skilled at sports, seduction, and securities fraud, he had a big personality that sucked so much air from the room that her unhinged eulogy sounds like the first chance she ever had to speak. And she's reveling in it, pointing out her dear old dad's mistress Candy and the best fried/enemy she blames for his four year incarceration. It's hard to tell how much of Thayer's sharp-tonged and playful monologue is truth; biographical facts (like their respective careers in the soap opera and military industries) match up, but the slender and pert Thayer succeeds more in sketching the bold strokes of a father-daughter portrait than filling in the details that would give it depth. When her meltdown passes through venom to acceptance, the effect is unaffecting cutesiness, and the hints that his indulgences might have been inherited aren't fully explored. Michael Learned's direction is crisply comedic.
Saturdays, 8 p.m. Starts: Feb. 23. Continues through March 15, 2008

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