Demetrius (David Z. Lanson, left) chews things over with Clancy (James Andrew Fraser) in Joe Thirstino’s Bringer of Doom.
To “kill,” in the parlance of stand-up comedy, is to fully win over an audience. And while a burly comic is one of the central characters staggering his way through Joe Thirstino’s toxic satire Bringer of Doom, the specter of killing, in the traditional sense of the term, is the larger presence on stage. There are no guns going off, but there are plenty of triggers. Attempted murder, attempted suicide, alcoholism and depression are the stars of this production, with cameo appearances by vengeance and indifference, not to mention an offstage death caused by a wayward sea mammal.
Thirstino’s setup is promisingly twisted. Lotte (Lena Drake) is a bitter young woman with guy troubles and a score to settle with her mother, Esme (Laura Botsacos). She has never forgiven Esme for ruining a birthday outing by announcing at a crowded restaurant that Lawrence, Lotte’s artist boyfriend at the time, was secretly in love with a man, his art dealer, Malcolm. Lotte declares that it was “the single most humiliating, crushing moment of my life,” to which Esme, in a display of tough love, counters, ”Exactly, a single moment that saved you from years of heartache.”
Demetrius (Lanson) tries some light comedy.
With Lotte’s mood-disorder support group doing her little good, she hatches a revenge plot against Esme that pivots around a washed-up, alcoholic insult comic named Demetrius (David Z. Lanson). After picking him up off a barroom floor, Lotte brings him home, cleans him up even while keeping him liquored up, and gives him an assignment. Esme and her boy toy turned fiancé, Clancy (James Andrew Fraser), will be making a rare visit to her house, and Demetrius’s task is to roast them with the harshest jokes he can muster. Humiliation, Lotte explains, “for an audience of one, a showcase just for me.”
But Demetrius, perhaps previously traumatized by his wife’s demise during a whale-watching trip gone terribly wrong, cannot stop guzzling from Lotte’s well-stocked bar. By the time Esme and Clancy arrive, the burns that Demetrius delivers pack the punch of weak tea. Luckily for Lotte, though less fortunately for the tone and tenor of the play, Demetrius turns out to be just a distraction from her actual, much darker—and much harder to swallow—plan of killing all three of them, as well as herself.
Her scheme fails, but just barely, turning what would have been a morbid little sketch into a two-act problem child complete with metaphysical turns, shifting allegiances and a less-than-satisfying conclusion. Apparently near-death experiences, even homicidal ones, can be life-changing. Clancy, having tasted the tranquility of death, wants more of it and starts speaking in tongues to find a way back. Lotte and a way-too-forgiving Esme grow closer as they ponder the fine line between killing and letting someone die, as Esme once did with her conniving first husband, who suffered a heart attack as she watched and did nothing. And Demetrius considers being a helpful human rather than a deadbeat, then thinks better of it.
Clancy (Fraser), Esme (Laura Botsacos, center) and Lotte (Lena Drake) find a ray of hope. Photographs by Dan Lane Williams.
Events turn ever so nihilistic as the foursome begin to realize, unconvincingly, that they would all be better off dead. Esme suggests, “Dying together is the ultimate together. It must outweigh all the other missed life events combined.” But the playwright refuses to pull the plug, with even Clancy now losing his desire for the hereafter. “There's nothing more awkward than a shared mania wearing off,” bemoans Esme in the night’s sharpest observation, before the show ends with a whimper and the decision to “go on with life as if [the night] never happened.”
Director Mark Koenig manages to keep the action moving; the tale may not have the courage of its convictions, but it is rarely boring. The cast, all boasting primarily TV and film credits, are a mixed bag. Lanson struggles with Demetrius, rendering him neither convincingly drunk nor especially funny while moving around the stage uncomfortably and throwing away any number of Thirstino’s one-liners. Drake, in her Off-Broadway debut, underplays Lotte’s manic tendencies to fine effect, demonstrating that quiet vengeance can be more haunting than loud retribution. Botsacos comes across wise and sympathetic as Esme, which works well for her, although it overly discredits Lotte’s daughterly despisal. And Fraser’s Clancy is appropriately clueless, yet tender within.
Alfred Schatz’s set design confusingly features a downstage platform, cluttered with clothes, that is never used while, in lieu of any sound design, the ambient noise wafting up from Cafe Wha? (the venue underneath the Players Theatre) lends street cred to Schatz’s questionably large New York City two-bedroom house.
Bringer of Doom runs through Aug. 25 at Players Theatre (115 MacDougal St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; matinees are at 3 p.m. Saturday, and Sunday. For tickets and information, visit bringerofdoomtheplay.com.
Playwright: Joe Thristino
Direction: Mark Koenig
Sets: Alfred Schatz
Lighting: Zachary Dulny
