The homicidal cohabitates with the hilarious in East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House, a one-man show describing the last denizens of the one remaining SRO (Single Room Occupancy) building in downtown Manhattan—a place “no one ever leaves willingly.”

The young thespian narrator and his painterly, mystical sister (who comes to New York to escape the rats in Paris!) must contend with an even more outlandish set. There is Frances, for starters, an antediluvian wet nurse who appropriates the building’s single bathroom, and Donald, the murderous mailman who ambushes her every morning with metronomic precision, dousing her with a blast of roach killer. These misfits and their scatological extravagances make today’s Downtown freaks seem about as dicey as the Bush twins (one of whom in fact lives on the next street over).

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