Onstage at Kitchen Dog is boom by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb. It’s a Twilight Zone take on ABC’s Big Bang Theory with a little Origin of the Species thrown in. If you like Richard Dawkins, you’ll love boom.
Jo, played by Jenny Ledel, is a journalism student stymied by an assignment to write about something that inspires hope. Naturally, she chooses to write about casual sex. Unfortunately, she ends up with Jules, the Bio-nerd, grad-student geek. You see, Jules noticed bizarre behavior in reef fish, so, logically, he makes plans and provisions for the end of the world by stocking a bunker with tampons, power bars and bourbon and turning to Craigslist for companionship. His posting advertised for “intensely significant coupling.” By that he means, repopulating the earth, which would be pretty significant except that he is gay. And to make matters more farcical, Jo hates babies and won’t have one no matter what. Will humanity survive?
Well we know that it does (though maybe not in the way we think) because this whole thing is an exhibit in some futuristic museum. Cue Twilight Zone music. Our tour guide to the end of the world (or the beginning if you look at it from her point of view) controls the scene with levers, provides commentary and when necessary for dramatic percussion. Unfortunately, unlike the Twilight Zone, there is very little suspense in this sitcom Sartre scenario. And you never know how necessary suspense is until it is gone. Have you ever had a four year old ask you why the chicken crossed the road?
There are some laughs. And Karen Parrish is fun as our operatically over-acted docent. But novice director Christine Vela never succeeds in getting her romantic leads to connect. Steele and Ledel turn in energetic performances. Steele’s Jules is awkward and frenetic. Ledel’s Jo is dismayed and shrill. But neither is willing to risk their performance on the other. Football without the tackling becomes track and field: athletically impressive but not emotionally enticing in the same way. And so it goes with this production of boom, the actors fell for the characters’ romantic opposition and the director let them get away with it. So, we are left with a lesson in evolution instead of a farcical fantasy of the romantically improbable. It is like a riddle gone wrong: Which came first the chicken or the egg? To get to the other side.
We shouldn’t be too surprised. After all, bait and switch is Twilight Zone’s bread and butter, but Nachtrieb toys with enduring human spirit and ingenuity with fatalistic flair. Basically, if none of our efforts matter, none of our failures do either. It is “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” served up existentially. Except that existence doesn’t precede essence, essence ends up extinguished. So, why worry? It’s a nihilistic optimism, but in these times, I’ll take optimism anywhere I can find it. Hakuna Matata or more appropriately: “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”
Image: Eric Steele and Jenny Ledel in boom (Photo: Matt Mrozek)
