merelyplayers.org - 'Sex/Death,' 'Worst Show' explore dark themes

Yet the Bloomington Playwrights Project must be happy with the marquee value of "Sex/Death" after six years of presenting new plays under that title and on those topics in Bloomington.

What the ensemble has brought to the 2009 IndyFringe is a "greatest-hits" version. The seven plays have in common a disturbing quality, especially when the themes are combined graphically in "Thanksgiving" by Neal Utterback. A gay man responds to an online personal ad that exposes him to the ultimate rough trade; this isn't Norman Rockwell's Thanksgiving, folks.

The humor that threads itself thinly through this horrifying scenario lies in the counterpoint of each man's selfishness and single-mindedness: Visitor Tom in search of ever-more intense thrills in anonymous sex; sociopath Tucker going through the motions as a taciturn host until he can prepare Tom (couldn't he have had a different name?) for his holiday feast. Derrick Krob ner and Ian McCabe went all-out in exploring the deadly bond.

In "The Edge," L.D. Goffigan pushes all the buttons of suicide fantasies.

I confess to a rubberneck fascination with "Thanksgiving," but "The Edge" moved me. A man (McCabe) and a woman (Margot Morgan), strangers to each other and apparently to the worlds they live in, quarrel over rights to the same time and spot to leap to their deaths.

The compromise they reach is perfect. The playwright arouses our sympathy for his characters even as we savor their ridiculousness.

"Worst Show in the Fringe"

A reviewer wants to praise a show that skewers a pompous, overbearing theater critic, if only to proclaim to the world, "Hey, I'm not like that."

But "The Worst Show in the Fringe," while it doesn't live down to its title, is so talky, shrill and self-absorbed that its considerable wit ends up muffled as if by a pillow of verbiage.

The pillow image is inescapable, because the kidnapped, tied-up critic in Joseph Scrimshaw's play has one jerked over his head a couple of times by a manic actor-director whose one-man show has been trashed in print by the captive journalist.

Revenge isn't sweet, however; it rises like bile in his mouth, pumped by a nasty divorce that's emptied his apartment and his soul. Thomas Wayne (Kevin Roach) rages at his ineptly bound victim (Ken Gist), who isn't cowed in the slightest. A lot of the vituperative crossfire is overdone, but a confused "who's-on-first" exchange of verbal haymakers stirs interest in the melee.

Both characters are egregiously stuck on themselves, which gives entrée to a louche moving man named Biff to step in from a "plague-on-both-your-houses" perspective. As played by Shaun Beal, Biff is an odd blend of working-class slacker disdainful of arty types and tough-love therapist with more than a few pretensions of his own. Granted, this isn't realism, but Biff is a barely credible all-purpose manipulator -- unfocused as a person, yet serviceable to the playwright for relieving and mocking the two antagonists' stridency.

"Sex/Death" Who manages to be consistently comfortable with either sex or death? No need for a show of hands here; you won't be believed.

"Worst Show in the Fringe"

"Sex/Death"

Who manages to be consistently comfortable with either sex or death? No need for a show of hands here; you won't be believed.