Anyone For A Threesome?
nytheatre.com review by Martin Denton
December 8, 2008
Just ASK Productions makes its theatrical debut with a program of three new short plays, under the umbrella title Anyone for a Threesome? The A, S, and K of the company's name are P. Case Aiken III, Adam Samtur, and Matthew Kagen, three young theatre artists who have each contributed one of the pieces to this evening; each directs one as well. They've acquitted themselves well as a company in meeting the many challenges of mounting new work from scratch with professionalism and care. And the plays they've written are interesting and diverse.
Samtur's show, I Am Tricky Nicky, gets the program off to a very strong start. In it, Rita, a young psychologist who is having trouble building up her practice, has a lunch-time meeting with an apparently crazy woman named Nicky (short for Nicolette). Nicky rattles on about two different husbands and a variety of other nonsensical topics, disconcerting Rita and the helpful but inexperienced waiter. But is Nicky really nuts, or is something more unusual going on here? Samtur provides a neat surprise twist at the end of the play that I certainly didn't see coming, giving I Am Tricky Nicky a very satisfying finish.
Let Them Eat Cake, by Kagen, also has a surprise ending. It's about three people who arrive at a mutual friend's apartment for a surprise birthday party. None of them really understands why he or she has been invited, since all have had strained relations with Andrew, the birthday boy (two are ex-girlfriends while the third is an ex-college roommate). Revelations and recriminations pile up, and then Andrew arrives and the nature of the party completely changes.
The final piece of the evening is Aiken's sci-fi-inflected Sans Deus. This ambitious work tells overlapping stories of a man who has lost his left hand in an accident and is obsessed with crafting the perfect replacement prosthesis, and a pair of men who have decided that building a Tesla coil is the way for them to carry out the Perfect Murder. I was particularly struck by the character of Dr. Sinister Polaro, the one-handed man; Aiken's monologues for him explore perspicaciously how we take our bodies for granted and what it might be like to suddenly lose a limb.
A cast of nine bring the three plays to life. The standout performance of the evening comes from Mindy Matijasevic as the title character in I Am Tricky Nicky; she convinces us that she's crazy—and then unconvinces us, in the course of just a few minutes. Also especially effective are Leo Goodman as Dr. Sinister Polaro and Matthew Cohn as one of the Tesla coil-makers who becomes obsessed with his creation.
All three pieces could probably benefit from some tightening and editing; possibly an outside director could help these playwrights make their work more focused and concise. But Aiken, Samtur, and Kagen all show promise as writers and directors, and I hope that Just ASK will continue to provide them a vehicle for honing their craft.
