ARTS NET, Tampa Bay*

Boom starts out promisingly enough.  The setting is a geeky guy’s apartment, which looks fairly normal except for the addition of a row of large circuit breakers around the circumference of the wall.  He (Jules, played by Chris Holcom) and an aggressive young woman (Jo played by Geneva Rae) are about to have sex, except that he seems very reluctant.  We presume that they have met online, but they are both so nervous that they seem about to fly out of their skin.  Suddenly Jules announces to the woman that he’s gay, and Jo nearly leaves in a fit of disgust until she is repelled from the door with a burst of light and sound effects and falls to the floor unconscious.  Jules revives her, leaving her even more pissed off.

A retro-looking pink haired woman (Barbara, played by Summer Hohnenkamp Jenkins) stands on the landing above them and periodically throws one of the switches, causing the characters to jerk around then resume their action.  It turns out that the man, who is a biologist, has predicted (based on the activity of fish) that a great cataclysm is about to occur.  He had placed an ad on Craiglist trying to lure a woman into his subterranean vault, in order to propagate the species.  He doesn’t say that, though.  What he does say is that he’s looking for is an “intensely significant coupling… sex to change the course of the world.”  Jo says, “I thought that just meant that you were really good.”  She is horrified at the thought of having babies.  “I am not some experiment.  Babies bother me philosophically.”  “You don’t want eggs from this basket,” she asserts, pointing in the direction of her stomach.  “They’re cracked.  I’m not meant to be a creator of spawn.”

Occasionally, Barbara (the pink haired woman) makes comments.  It took me awhile to figure out that this was some kind of far future museum exhibit, portraying the final days of the last people remaining on Earth before a great cataclysm, and that Barbara is, in fact, descended from the fish in Jules’ tank.  The playwright, Peter Sinn Nachtreib, has a knack for writing contemporary-sounding dialogue and there are some funny moments in the play.  When Jo finds out that Jules is a virgin, she comments, “Why?  There are thousands of men out there with low standards.”  There is also a funny reference to Verizon’s reception after the world has ended, and various other pop asides.

I like the idea of the play within a play, and a story within a story, but as much as the premise of the show seems promising, it really doesn’t go anywhere.  The characters just become more and more annoying, acting in ways that human beings would never act, and the museum docent only gives us vague clues as to what’s going on.  There isn’t much character development supplied by the author.  I think the story would have been more effective if the fact that the characters were part of an exhibit in a museum had been a surprise to the audience at some point, and if the characters actually learned something about themselves during the course of the play.

Bohnenkamp-Jenkins is right-on as the quirky, retro-looking tour guide with the hot pink beehive hairdo.  She is cheery in a manic sort of way, and seems just right for the part.  Granted, this is a metafiction sci-fi play, but  Director Kari Goetz chose to have Holcom and Rae act in such a stylized way that it approaches over-acting.  They put an amazing amount of energy into their parts, though, both physical and emotional.

Goetz’s stage directions excel in the quick action and fierce pitching and tossing of actors.  The physicality of the production is demanding, and Holcom and Rae prove extremely agile, banging against walls and furniture, jumping all over the set and each other.  Scenic and Lighting Designer Brian Smallheer created a two-tiered set that fit the action of the play well, and David Jenkins provided a zippy soundtrack.

If you like quirky comedies, Boom may be just the thing for you.

Boom will be playing Mar. 11-28, Thu.-Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm - Tickets: $24.50 - Shimberg Playhouse, David A. Straz Center for the Performing Arts