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You Live By The Sword, You Die By The Sword
And that noise is the sound of children laughing. Okay, not children, but 30-somethings and under, drawn to the Seattle Rep's Leo K. theatre by a new play from Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, a playwright so cool and cutting edge he lives in the Mission in San Francisco. And of course having two of Seattle's most talented young-ish actors, Chelsey Rives and Nick Garrison, in lead roles doesn't hurt. Not to mention the scenic design genius of Jennifer Zeyl.
boom (at the Rep through December 14, tickets $10-$45) has a Twilight Zone set-up played--to the hilt--for laughs. We'd call it a "hilariously profane romp through the Apocalypse" but we get paid for writing ad copy, and besides, there's something intransigent in the play that resists snappy descriptive slogans. It keeps leading you down old roads that somehow open onto new horizons you haven't considered.
Jules (Nick Garrison) is a marine biology grad student. Jo (Chelsey Rives) is the journalism student who answers his Craigslist casual encounters ad. Jules is living in his underground lab, which is another amazing Zeyl creation; her sets have an over-built integrity to them that give them an ambient presence, like a Transformer in disguise.
First, Nachtrieb skewers the protocols of online dating: the jumpy Jules has a tragically funny family history he's working through while Jo is on a sex-accomplished mission. But then she discovers Jules thinks the fish he's been studying know the world is about to end, and the play shifts gears. Garrison and Rives don't have terrific chemistry at the outset--there's a reason for that--but as things sour, their unchemistry achieves remarkable things, culminating in Garrison's can't-live-with-'em roommate tirade for the ages.
Shifting gears literally, overhead, is Barbara (Gretchen Krich), whose purpose is unclear at first. She's not supposed to talk, she tells the audience, but her instincts and emotion get the best of her, and before too long, she's taking up a position front and center. Krich plays her like your favorite, slightly batty drama and/or biology teacher--trembling with a passion to communicate her passion to listeners.
Director Jerry Manning alternates the pacing between brisk and peremptory, for Jules and Jo, and lets a little more air in for Barbara's scene-chewing. Meanwhile, the play teases you with allusions to what it's "about" without settling on any one thing. There's sex and alienation. Lots of marine biology. Environmental apocalypse. The death of theatre. The defunding of science education. The corporatized workplace.
But best of all is an ending that comes from within the play, not outside it, leaving you feeling surprisingly open to apocalypse's creative destruction.
Chelsey Rives as Jo and Nick Garrison as Jules in boom by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb and directed by Jerry Manning. Photo © Chris Bennion, 2008.
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I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but the Rep has a good play! I saw this on the 1st preview night with zero in the way of expectations. It sounded contrived, and dumb as only a pseudo-intellectual theater can be.
I was wrong. There you go - I said it. It is entertaining and thought provoking (and reasonably scientific). My only (minor) gripe is that somehow in the 1st few minutes I was struck with the vocal and physical similarity of Nick Garrison to Rob Corddry, and I couldn't shake that thought.
Go see this - it makes up for the 3 Musketeers. Well, perhaps 1 of them.