Off-Broadway Review: A GROUNDBREAKING ACHIEVEMENT OF OUTRAGEOUS IMPORTANCE THAT PEOPLE SCROLL BY, BARELY IMPACTED (Outta Bounds Productions at Theaterlab)

A GROUNDBREAKING ACHIEVEMENT INDEED

The short take on this play is that Jake Shore — as they say at the website The Rumpus — WRITES LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER.

He is new to me, but he’s not an unknown quantity. At least one critic has compared his previous work to Beckett. In my case, both Harold Pinter and the young David Mamet spring to mind. Suffice to say, this guy is very far from being an also-ran. New York may not be big enough to hold him. He’s also a novelist (A Country for Fibbing) and his short stories have been published in many of the country’s leading literary journals. This guy has the juice!

Brad Fryman & Laura Lockwood

The Groundbreaking Achievement of the play’s title is the ascendancy of Artificial Intelligence. The plot hangs on the experiences of one Frank Whitehead, a dean of students at Brooklyn College, brilliantly created by Brad Fryman, an actor who bears a slight physical resemblance to the late Philip Seymour Hoffman and an even more substantial resemblance in terms of talent. On Broadway his work here would be nominated for a Tony. The charming, but overwhelmed Dean is having to deal with the rise of Artificial Intelligence in a variety of ways and he is feeling cornered. One way the playwright tells this story is through the use of Whitehead’s constantly ringing, ever more importunate, telephone. Watching Fryman as Whitehead adjust his manners to each call and the situation presented is a lesson in fine acting. And funny enough that I nearly fell off my chair several times. In fact, Whitehead’s performance (and that of the other actors) was met with foot stamps, howls of delight, fist bumping, and repeated spontaneous applause from the audience at last night’s opening at Theatrelab. All of it well deserved.

Amber Gatlin & Megan Magee

But I digress.

Along with the overly aggressive telephone, and his new Tesla (with which he is obsessed), Frank’s encounters with tech include counseling a student who has been having a troubling experience.

Now, let me point out that a number of playwrights have been taking on this very subject. And the plays tend to be quite good. For example, I reviewed the very fine Scarlett Dreams at Greenwich House Theatre just last week.

But playwright Shore is fearless and goes where nobody else has thought to go before.

Megan Magee & Brad Fryman

The complaint of the disturbed and disturbing student, Caroline Doherty (hilariously performed by Amber Gaitlin) is that she is being sexually harassed. By an Artificial Intelligence Bot. And, what’s more, she’s finding the AI Bot (clearly a Dom) to be, well, rather stimulating. And what’s more, this Bot Dom has suggested that Caroline commit suicide, not that this is a bad thing, but a means by which she could move on to another version of her fifth dimensional self.

Frank is nonplussed.

Laura Lockwood & Brad Fryman

The plot is further complicated by Frank’s absent wife and his love affair with his assistant, Eileen Orion. As skillfully played by Laura Lockwood, Eileen is the voice of sanity in the midst of madness. Frank’s son Mitchell then shows up with an even more outrageous story of an encounter with AI. As Mitchell, Dave Morrissey, Jr,  achieves the nearly impossible by making the story completely believable.

Rounding out the excellent cast is Virginia Carter as Megan Magee, who goes mad with ambition in her efforts to wrest the position of Dean of students from Frank.

Brad Fryman & Dave Morrissey Jr.

All of these stories and plot complications are interesting, but what makes this play something more than extraordinary is Jake Shore’s mastery of language, and his willingness to follow the words down unexpected paths. Shore is something very rare: a language playwright in love with words, capable of bursts of poetry and wild acrobatic riffs, abandoning plot to take every opportunity for improvisational excesses that thrill. He writes like a circus tumbler, a trapeze artist, a tightrope walker, a runaway locomotive. But he never goes off the track.

Amber Gatlin & Brad Fryman

In one inspired sequence, the character of Frank drifts into a monologue about chickens and cows that goes on and on like a dripping faucet building into a Niagara of absurdity and culminating with Frank’s wry observation: “But I digress.” It gets one of the biggest laughs in a night of guffaws.

The set turns this small black box theatre into a white box — everything is white, even the theater seats and the light fixtures. The various mises en scène are created by AJ Mattiou‘s excellent projections. Director Andrew J. Beck is responsible for the sound design along with the polished comic timing overall. Brynne Oster-Bannson‘s costumes and Joe Rubino‘s lighting serve the play well.

A Groundbreaking Achievement of Outrageous Importance… is, itself, a groundbreaking achievement. You should definitely go see this new work by Jake Shore. You will be catching a rising star! Very highly recommended is an understatement.

Dave Morrissey Jr. & Brad Fryman

photos by John Robert Hoffman