Pages

Sunday, October 10, 2010

REVIEW: “BOOM” @ ALLIANCE REP THEATRE COMPANY

When the stage lights came down on Alliance Rep’s production of boom last evening at the Edison Valley Playhouse, I turned to my husband and asked, “What was that?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, “but it sure was funny.”

That is Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s doomsday comedy, boom, a play that will have you laughing aloud in the theater, scratching your head as you leave and wanting to talk about it with your friends long after the play is over.

Set in a strange Museum of Natural History (or a theme park—take your pick), where an animated installation is controlled by a docent, boom takes viewers 65 million years back in time to a cataclysmic event: the collision of a giant comet with the Earth, obliterating all living beings except two—a man and a woman—hiding in an underground university research lab where they are to mate and repopulate the Earth.

boom 2 Unfortunately for the Earth, but fortunately for the audience’s entertainment, the exhibit’s subjects are totally unsuited to the task at hand. Jules, nerdy marine biologist grad student, has spent four years alone on a sand spit off the coast of South America, studying the sleeping patterns of fish, and has come up with the theory that a comet is about to collide with the Earth—kind of like the big bang that wiped out the dinosaurs millions of years ago, making way for homo sapiens to evolve and populate the planet. Jo, his unwilling “partner” in this endeavor—she answered a Craiglist ad for “sex that will change the course of the world” and finds herself imprisoned in the bunker—is a foul-mouthed journalism undergrad with a paper, due Monday, about “random sex as the last glimmer of hope in a decaying society.” Complicating matters is the fact that he is gay and she hates babies!

All this makes for a rollercoaster of a plot, controlled by the actions of Barbara, who from time to time stops the action by throwing a lever or making a loud noise and interjecting a series of comments, professional and personal, directed at the audience, who represent the public (tourists?) viewing the exhibit.

As off-the-wall as this may seem, Nachtrieb’s play is actually a biting satire of what modern folks like to think about their ancestors, especially those people who deny evolution and reject the idea that humankind is descended from apes. Nachtrieb has great fun with the idea that our primal male ancestor is a homosexual and our female progenitor hates kids and swears like a sailor! Perhaps that explains modern society’s deficiencies in those two areas!

boom 1 On a terrific set designed by Darianna Fraser and lit by Ed Pearson and under Michael Driscoll’s masterful direction, three splendid actors enact this “most important moment in history,” as Barbara calls it. Gus Ibryani’s Jules is an earnest, if socially challenged scientist. Just watching him stumble physically and verbally in his interactions with Jo is a delight to behold. As Jo, Lilli Marques is all sullen outrage, spouting profanities with ease, even though Jules doesn’t like her to do it. Her use of the curse word M-F becomes punctuation rather than an obscenity, and her attacks on the door in her 3204th escape attempt in 267 days are a fierce cry for freedom, no matter how terrible things are up on Earth. Beth Painter is hilarious as Barbara, all no-nonsense as she opens the installation for the public (cleaning up trash left from the previous day), proud of the improvements she has made to it (the drums and cymbals, primarily) but despairing as she realizes the exhibit she has poured her professional life into is about to close due to low attendance and doubts about the veracity of the story (it might be just a theory, right?).

For those people who don’t wish to think of apes as human ancestors, I am not sure Nachtrieb’s boom will offer much solace, for these two individuals don’t appear to be promising progenitors of modern human beings. On second thought, perhaps they, with their potty mouths, sexual orientations and lack of social graces, really are! A chilling thought, that. Perhaps the four fish in Jules’ aquarium would have done better!

Boom will be performed at the Edison Valley Playhouse, 2196 Oak Tree Road, Edison, through October 23. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 PM, Sunday matinee October 17 at 2 PM; Friday evening Cast Talk Back October 15. For information and tickets, call 908.755.4654.