"Bone to Pick" the best of three shorts by Cutting Ball

"Someone needs to treat me like a piece of meat." This opening line from "Bone to Pick" is just a taste of the raw sensuality packed into the world premiere of local playwright Eugenie Chan's take on the Greek myth of Ariadne, who fell in love with Theseus and helped him defeat the Minotaur, only to be abandoned. The one-woman play is paired with two other shorts by Gertrude Stein and Suzan-Lori Parks, and although Cutting Ball delivers all three with its usual stylized flair, "Bone" grabs you and doesn't let go. Ria, as Ariadne is called in the play, has been reduced to waiting tables at a dirty backwoods diner ("princess of the pie case — when we had one"). She's forced to survive on baked beans as she fights off the crude advances of Theo. Yet Ria is no shrinking violet, and actress Paige Rogers sinks her teeth into Chan's muscular, direct language, never letting the audience or her wayward lover off the hook. The climax of the play doesn't quite deliver the punch you expect, but there are so many rich treats along the way that you are left, like Ria, already eager for more of the meat Chan and Rogers have to offer.