Survive This!, Bailiwick Repertory. It’s hard to get past the counterintuitive presumption of Survive This! creator Rusty Hernandez. The only knowledge you’d guess he’d expect of his audience based on the title–some acquaintance with TV’s Survivor!–isn’t actually required, as the show bears only a faint structural resemblance to “America’s cultural phenomenon,” as it’s called in the subtitle. (Host “Jason Provolone” and the “Kuchie” and “Ogakrap” teams do not a parody make.) But Hernandez does assume a comprehensive familiarity with “behind-the-scenes” theater, especially the audition process. Worse, as the show runs in non-self-contained “episodes” through May 21, he’s apparently counting on patrons to attend the show five times in a month–a preposterous expectation of anyone but the hardest-core theatergoer.
