Motortown is a 90 minute journey into the abbess of a psychopathic soldier who returns from the Iraq war isolated, desperate and hopeless. Danny is also a self-proclaimed squaddie (A member of the armed forces who thinks he’s the “Gods gift to women”). Danny is determined to win back his old girlfriend Marley (Julie Siple) but she is fearful of Danny since he sent her weird letters from Iraq. her rejection send him on a downward spiral of violence and despair.

This well paced show has several vaudevillian songs that in themselves were witty and humorous. The jokes reminded me of grooming up watching the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday evenings where the likes of Alan King grabbed our laugh bones. Many of the jokes depend on razor-sharp timing and this cast delivered them with deft aplomb. For those of us who admire and are familiar with this unique style of humor, there is much to admire and laugh at here.

The drama builds into a tensely shocking twist that leads to a stunning climax. Amy Kasper’s performance emerges from mild sarcasm to blinding rage as her vengeance explodes toward Richard.

Martin Crimp’s translation from German to English for Ferdinand Bruckner’s 1926 play Pains of Youth yields a stiff, too academic, use of words that no college student would use in common speaking especially a group of hedonistic pleasure-seeking students.

Theatrically, mounting a music about the Holocaust is both tricky and daunting. But with tasteful, haunting music sung with deep emotions using rich harmonies and subdued tones, Signs of Life works as a profound depiction of the reaction and determination of the artists to “tell the truth” through their art (whether on stage or in drawings) as to what happened in the camp.