Blast from the Past

If you’ve been daydreaming of cryonics (the science of freezing dead people in hopes of future resurrection), you’d better start saving your shining pennies -- prolonging your existence is pricey. According to the Cryonics Institute, it will put you back about $28,000. Good news, though: You won’t have to settle the bill until you kick the bucket. Even better news is that Upstream Theater’s zany new play by Philip Boehm, which is staged at 305 South Skinker Boulevard ( 314-863-4999 or www.upstreamtheater.org), will help you prepare mentally for your afterlife adventure. Inspired by Vladimir Mayakovsky’s satire The Bedbug, Return of the Bedbug tells a similar story: After being accidentally preserved via electric shock in the mid-´80s Soviet Union, a wayward electrician returns to life twenty years later in America. The country he knows has not only changed, it’s gone completely. Tickets for what Boehm refers to as his “comically grotesque” look at culture clash are $15 to $20; performances are at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday (October 26 through November 11).
Thursdays-Sundays. Starts: Oct. 26. Continues through Nov. 11, 2007