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.