June 20, 2002

THEATER PREVIEW

PRICK
In Seattle

By STEVE WIECKING

K. Brian Neel has an elastic imagination, a body of equal rubber, and no fear of confronting dauntingly concrete challenges. Last time around, the solo performer put on a one-man film noir--twelve people leaping from his slender frame in a fatalistic murder mystery he called DOUBLE CLIMAX. Now he's upped the ante: PRYK will have him juggling fifteen disparate characters and two different worlds. The show concerns the mad descent of a fantasy author locked in a place between the imaginary land he created and the real life he can't control. Neel, himself, is on the ascent--a true artist in evolution whose liquid, split-second transformations, when fully honed, should solidify his reputation far beyond.