Native Speech

by Eric Overmyer, Jay Reiner (Introduction)

In a futuristic city, one man tells it like he sees it — Hungry Mother! He's the DJ with a strong pulse but a weak signal. He riffs on the truth with verbal virtuosity, with primal passion, with ambidextrous dexterity, with a sexy scream … but when his visions begin to manifest themselves in sinister ways, is he being played by darker forces? Or are his words creating a dangerous truth?“Down at the bottom of your radio dial is a station with a weak signal but a strong message. The man behind the message calls himself Hungry Mother, and he’s a disc jockey with a difference. In NATIVE SPEECH, the difference is playwright Eric Overmyer’s chilling vision of a society about to go belly up … NATIVE SPEECH shapes its ideas through a network of rich visual and verbal images rather than resorting to logic. Overmyer has created a wonderful hip language for Hungry to speak, and it never dies in his mouth no matter how surreal the psychic terrain through which we move. As in all good cautionary tales, the unspoken word behind the story is: beware.” —Jay Reiner, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner

Genres: Plays

Paperback

Published April 10, 2019

Reviews

[Stuart · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Eric Overmyer's play more in theory than I do in reality, and while I applaud the ambition and the extended exercise in vernacular, the insubstantial story and largely insubstantial characters (principal male lead aside) make the running time feel like overkill, especially as things don't get truly interesting until the final third or so of the text. A rather conventional street melodrama, Overmyer attempts to elevate his tawdry tale with social commentary that was probably relevant in the 80s, but now has a sort of quaint, aging hippy vibe to it, bordering on somewhat patronizing in moments when it feels like just another burn out trying to stick it to the man- because he doesn't seem to need to earn a living or maintain any kind of relationship with anyone. Exactly the sort of play college kids think is profound, but it's really just a little pretentious. Still, applause for the effort and the writing itself, which reaches some incredibly poetic heights, though often at its most incoherent.

[Billy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Hungry Mother.

Okay.

Anyway, this play out Sheppard's Sam Sheppard in the LES.