When I saw Edgar Oliver’s one-man show back in November, I was blown away. It was a strange sensation, as though I had just witnessed a classic—some unpublished masterpiece by Arthur Miller—except that this was the play’s first run, and the ink was barely dry. Now, for his encore engagement, all the critics, right up to The New York Times’ Ben Brantley, are raving—and with good reason. After a life spent traipsing around the creaky boards at La MaMa, and underground haunts like the Pyramid Club, Oliver (until now merely a Downtown legend) seems to have hit the limelight (he has also been cast in the upcoming feature film Gentlemen Broncos, directed by Jarred Hess of Napoleon Dynamite fame). The homicidal cohabitates with the hilarious in East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House (written by Oliver), a play depicting a menagerie, not of glass, but of pungent flesh and brittle bone. These are the last denizens of the one remaining SRO (Single Room Occupancy) building in downtown Manhattan—a place “no one ever leaves willingly.”

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