Underneath the shiny exterior of a 1950's family lurks the dysfunction they try so hard to hide. At once, hilarious and sad, schticky and poetic, WASP is a beautiful, funny play by one of America's premier comedians, Steve Martin.

• Forth Worth Star-Telegram Review
• Dallas Morning News Review
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March 22, 2004 By PERRY STEWART / Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Love, the husband and father in WASP tells us in a sad soliloquy, comes in three phases: attraction, desire, need. The last is where he cannon, alas, go.

And the source would be the newest challenging enigma from Mamet or Shepard? A lost Beckett manuscript? Nope. Try a satire by Steve Martin.

Yes, that Steve Martin -- the once and future "wild and crazy guy" who also has proven himself in recent years as one of our top-rant serious writers. By selecting one of Martin's plays as its first production, the brand-new Bootstraps Comedy theater signals that its aiming high.

Bootstraps' well-acted production of WASP, which debuted this past weekend at the Rosewood Center for Family Arts in Dallas, reveals both the zany and the poignant sides of Martin. The setting is the home of a 1950s white Angloo-Saxon Protestant family that might be the neighbors of Ward and June Cleaver.

Mom (Amy Shoults Rosenthal) is a perky caricature who finds solace in speaking to an omnicient voice. Dad (Jeremy Whiteker) prattles about golf and answers his son's serious questions with meaningless syllables. So the son (Brian Witkowicz) can only beam his problems up to another galaxy, where wisdom is accessible but not necessarily comforting. Sis (Jennifer Youle) doesn't even attempt a heart-to-heart with Mom.

Laugh lines are plentiful, even as this perfect family begins to unravel. But by the time the dad attempts to contact his all-knowing voice (without success), you realize that WASP is more a portrait of all-too-typical American dysfunction than a spoof of Leave It To Beaver and TV Families.

March 20, 2004 By TOM SIME / Dallas Morning News

"Frivocative" is the hybrid term Bootstraps Comedy Theater uses to describe its debut, an odd pairing of the frivolous and the provocative. What a fun word fame! One could also call the double feature -- a silly vaudeville-style revue followed by Steve Martin's enigmatic one-act WASP -- "siligmatic." Or "ha-ha-huh?"

...Mr. Martin's WASP tries for a darker tone. We know we're in for some social satire when we see the set, with its colonial furniture and Reader's Digest Condensed Books, and hear sticom theme music. The cast looks smashingin its '50s get-ups: Amy Shoults Rosenthal in a prim apron as Mom, Jeremy Whiteker in horn-rims and argyle sweater as Dad, [Brian] Witkowicz in jeans and sneakers as Son, and Jennifer Youle in bouncing ponytail as Sis.

Mr. Martin's writing is inconsistent and sometimes pretentions, but the performances are solid and well-detailed in this attempt to deconstruct or ridicule...something. Ripping the lid off the false image projected by sitcoms is surely not the play's mission; that's been done to death.

Still, there are dark hints that something's not right in the land of that other Ozzie. Mom has had the dog put to sleep because "he just wouldn't stay off the furniture." Sis announces she's going off to "choir molestation." And when Dad's gone, the others talk with British accents.

It doesn't really add up. Mr. Martin's an interesting stage writer, if not a thorough one.