"boom" - B Street Theatre

Through a series of implausible and virtually-unbloggable events, I ended up being invited by M.R. to see "boom" at the B Street Theatre on Sunday afternoon.

Marcus Crowder at the Sacramento Bee reviewed boom:

There's an obvious but rarely asked question regarding the end of the world as we know it. How would the next world then begin?

Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's subversively funny and genuinely thought- provoking new play "boom" suggests a biologically plausible theory. You can actually experience the ideas unfolding during director Michael Stevenson's rollicking new production at B Street Theatre.

Nachtrieb's theory (he has degrees in biology and theater) isn't what you likely thought it would be, but then neither is his subtly revelatory narrative.

...Nachtrieb smartly mashes them up in a subterranean university research lab where an Internet-arranged sex date takes an apocalyptic turn.

The tryst has been arranged by Peter Story's gay virgin scientist Jules, and his intimate is Sarah Aili's skeptical student journalist Jo. As first dates go, this one will truly be memorable.

But first let's have a drum roll from the onstage timpani played by our humble narrator Barbara, the sublime Jamie Jones. Barbara oversees the action from her perch at the back of the stage, and occasionally she pauses things with her series of levers on the wall. Samantha Reno inventively designed the intricate bunker set.

When Jo first arrives and Jules surreptitiously locks the heavy door behind her, we seem to be in for a dark modern sex comedy. Jules has advertised for someone who'd like to participate in end-of-the-world sex. Jo has responded thinking the description was more figurative than literal – plus she has a writing assignment to complete and the date seems as fine a subject as anything else.

As Story's likable Jules shows a hesitancy about actually having sex and Aili's incendiary Jo becomes more frustrated and angry, the story begins to shift. When Jo decides she's had enough and tries to leave, Barbara stops everything for some increasingly informative asides. Let's just say her character becomes more and more surprisingly central to the action as the play progresses.

Jones' Barbara has a benignly kooky presence and Story's Jules swoons with sweetness and decency, but Aili's Jo only responds to him with a stream of bile.

After two acts of her continual f-bombs, Jo wears thin, and one wishes Nachtrieb might have written more dynamics and less histrionics into her character. A few bombs gently placed often do more significant damage than than a whole bunch heedlessly hurled around.

Strange afternoon. M.R. fell asleep through almost all of Act 1 despite Barbara's percussive interruptions. The man in front of me jumped every time Barbara banged on her drums (he didn't return for Act 2). Jo dropped F-bombs like General Curtis LeMay ordering incendiaries dropped over Tokyo. And then, the the big "boom" of the Comet striking the Earth!

Jo's scorching language was strangely-exciting, and made me wonder what a first-date with Sarah Aili might be like.

Jules was pleasingly nerdy, but some of his scientific dialogue wasn't scientifically-correct, which the scientist playwright no doubt knew, but decided to overlook. Still, as a scientist, I must object....

With her drums and interjections, the presence of narrator Barbara was often annoying, and beside-the-point, and often detracted from the human drama, but eventually her real purpose was revealed: the real story wasn't about the people at all! Anthropocentric as we all are, we often forget that the Theory of Evolution makes no exceptions and has no favorites!

Hooray for Darwin! Hooray for Natural Selection and the Theory of Evolution! Long live boom!

Now, I wonder if Sarah Aili would like to step out for some yogurt....?