I regret not reading Enda Walsh's 2006 play The Walworth Farce before reviewing Neil Ferron's Fabulous Prizes, which was performed in the summer of 2011 by the Satori Group and became a strong part of my early enthusiasm for the company.

In Walsh's play, a demented father on the run from his own past has kept his sons hostage in an apartment for years and forces them to perform an insane play on a daily basis to reinforce a myth he's invented about who they are and why they're stuck in space (the apartment) and time (reenacting the same scene every day). Things go sideways when a stranger shows up and interrupts their daily ritual. In Ferron's play, a demented father keeps his son hostage in an apartment for years and forces him to perform in an insane play on a daily basis to reinforce a myth he's built about who they are and why they're stuck. Things go sideways when a stranger shows up and interrupts their daily ritual.

The two plays have some structural differences—Walsh's father keeps up his farce to avoid the present and the future, and Ferron's father keeps up his farce with the mad hope that it will serve as training for the day he and his son return to the world and open a restaurant together—but Prizes is clearly a response to Farce, and reviewing the latter without knowing anything about the former doesn't make much sense.

But I didn't realize that until approximately 8:30 p.m. on the evening of October 6 of this year, when I was roughly half an hour into New Century Theatre Company's production of The Walworth Farce. The next day, I e-mailed Ferron to ask if he was familiar with the play. He said he was—and was a huge Enda Walsh fan—but felt like he'd injected enough of his own ideas and language into Prizes to make it stand on its own. I agree with him, for the most part, but still wish I'd known.

Mostly, I'm embarrassed I got caught with my pants down, because Enda Walsh is a well-known playwright. It's always uncomfortable to be publicly slapped in the face with your own ignorance.

I remain enthusiastic about Satori Group (who are devoted to bringing original works into the world) and Neil Ferron (who's lately taken to directing music videos), and I expect to see more good stuff from both of them. But if I had done better homework as a critic, and had some working knowledge of The Walworth Farce a year and a half ago, I would've watched Fabulous Prizes with slightly different eyes. recommended