Catgut Strung Violin

A fringe highlight from the get-go, this masterful dark comedy about war should be mounted outside every arms trade show in the world. Not that it would transform our bellicose side – that seems engrained, suggests Albuquerque, N.M.’s Tricklock Company – but at least it might balance it with compassion. Certainly, Anton, the central, violin-playing character in this three-man show elicits our sympathy. Sweet, naïve, an inveterate blunderer, he’s carted off to fight in a horrific war that defines the word “absurd” and plays heavily on the old oxymoron of military intelligence. Rooted in the physicality of silent film, at moments ironically balletic, Catgut Strung Violin is as surreal as a dream, as real as a bullet to the brain. At Academic Hall until June 28.