The idea that -- in a post-apocalyptic society created by the crashing of the electrical grid and nuclear power plant meltdowns -- The Simpsons' "Cape Feare" episode might transform into some kind of strange and dark (but ultimately hopeful) pantomime about the destruction of the old world is an intriguing one; after all, pop culture fills the same role in the contemporary world that folk culture once did -- so who's to say pop couldn't one day become folk? Yet this is marred by thinly-drawn characters who exist solely to serve the play's concept and a sense of grim self-seriousness totally at odds with the source material it plunders. Definitely a play rich in ideas -- but do the ideas really go anywhere, or point at anything greater than the novelty of "The Simpsons as folk memory of past horrors"? I don't really think so.