Wisdom of the Absurd or Panty-Headed Mama

What's not to like about Wickam Boyle? She's a cheerful middle-aged career mom prone to Proustian reflections. No cork-lined-room madeleine-taster in search of lost time, she's as much a part of the Big Wormy Apple as a sturdy four-story walkup, as rooted in the here and now as the smell of outdoor fish stands on Canal Street in Chinatown.

I've already raved about her recent blast, "Car Sex." In "Wisdom of the Absurd" Boyle launches us on another, less raunchy but no less peppy odyssey that occurred twenty years ago when she worked as an executive director for the non-profit avant-garde theater, La MaMa in the East Village. Boyle's four-minute drop-in focuses on an anecdote, which turns out to be a kind of parable.

Without giving away too much, let me say that Boyle's narrative involves her trying to prepare a grant proposal for La MaMa. Given her unruly tresses and a few hours away from her toddler daughter Willy, Boyle finds nothing so effective in keeping her hair out of her eyes than Willy's training pants.

I won't go into detail about how Boyle slaves away at her task, picks up her daughter, and, filled with the glow of accomplishment-- the joie de vivre of a red-hot mama who has excelled in her service to La MaMa -- bikes home (just as she speeds through Manhattan in "Car Sex").

I won't divulge Boyle's final scene. Let me say here that certain feelings of silliness, embarrassment, and anger give way to the epiphany-slash-moral that "caps off" -- all puns intended -- this charming parable, the gist of which is that Boyle has just given herself "a lesson in the divine wisdom of the absurd."

Wickam Boyle is one wickedly wise witch! Four broomsticks go to Wickie, Willy, and their witch-doctor licensor, Rachel Bonham Carter!