Monopoly! will be tonight at 8:00 pm and tomorrow at 2:00 pm and 8:00 pm at Zero Arrow.

Mike Daisey kicks off his monologue "Monopoly!" with the following statement: "I've always had a love for endless games." And then a torrent of thoughts about the legendary board game of the same name come tumbling out of his mouth, and the game gets "bigger, weirder, and stranger."

In the span of an hour and forty-five minutes, "Monopoly!" the monologue indeed grows "bigger, weirder, and stranger" as Daisey pulls together a number of loosely linked stories. Even though the story of Nikola Tesla, Daisey's own tesla coil hi-jinks, Bill Gates lore, and the history of "Monopoly!" don’t seem to have much in common, Daisey's stage presence whisks the audience from story to story.

Although Daisey discusses "Monopoly" first and gives his monologue that name, he could have called the monologue "Tesla!" Often wiping sweat off his brow, Daisey clearly gives his all throughout the monologue, but he is truly enraptured by the life of inventor Nikola Tesla, one of the most brilliant minds to ever get the shaft. A kinship develops between Daisey and Tesla, especially when Daisey imagines Tesla's creative process. According to Daisey, Tesla locks himself in a room, lights shoot out, weird sounds emerge, and people just shove sandwiches under the door until he's ready with his latest invention. You get the feeling that Daisey is talking about a little bit of himself.

Image of Mike Daisey from promotional photo. Read more of the review after the jump!

Daisey leaps back and forth from Tesla's life to his own modern-day encounters with Tesla and corporations. One story involves the difficulties of bringing a tesla coil onstage when he collaborates with a fey theater group led by a man who looks like a cross between "Jesus and Ashton Kutcher." The corporations enter the tale in serious and funny ways. The serious tone emerges when Daisey describes his family in Maine, who are grossly underpaid yet still take great pleasure in Wal-Mart. But, whenever a thread gets too serious, Daisey brings the audience back to laughter and surprise with hilarious tales of Bill Gates trying to act and the excessive features of Microsoft Word.

As the monologue winds down, "Monopoly," the board game, becomes a lens through which we can interpret the collision of genius with the brick walls of practicality and commerce. Tesla collides with Edison and Westinghouse. Daisey collides with the directors who are terrified of a tesla coil wreaking havoc onstage. (So you know, their fears are justified.) And you can just guess what happens to the inventor of "Monopoly."

The only problem is that Daisey has a little trouble bringing all these stories together into a conclusion. Since there are so many strands, sometimes the changes in tone from funny to serious seem abrupt. But, if you're more interested in enjoying the wild trip that Daisey takes the audience on, then you'll laugh harder than you have in a long time.