Niagara Falls is a broken play for a broken city. A three hundred year old boy (and former British soldier) leaves his home at the bottom of the Niagara River and wanders through the rust belt dereliction of the city, dripping wet and asking everyone: “do you know why there are so many bodies in the whirlpool?” The answers are elliptical, given by a host of foils. The corrupt mayor is more interested in his five thousand and five dollars; the mayor’s mistress is obsessed with Canada; the mayor’s wives only care to leave him (and the city by extension), and the owner of a Seneca casino wants a casual revenge. Driven by imagist poetics, it is the city itself that is the protagonist, quickly approaching the end of its dramatic arc. The boy’s question begs the larger question: how, with good resources, location, and one of the seven wonders of the natural world, can an American city die?