Slapdash Writing, Production Plague “Pick of the Vine”

This last year has been a terrible time for theatre, particularly small companies and troupes. While most have gone completely dark, some have at least tried their hand at mounting plays online. The problematic reality is that theatre is a very different animal than film/video, requiring a separate skill set to do well.

Unfortunately, in translating its annual “Pick of the Vine” event (an evening of short plays that has opened every Little Fish season since the beginning of the millennium) to the internet, Little Fish Theatre hasn’t brought on board anyone with those skills. Even more problematic, however, is the quality of the plays they’ve chosen to include. 

The opener, Jack Karp’s Working from Hideout, may be the best of the bunch. Clark Kent (Charlie Bates) is giving Bruce Wayne (Doug Mattingly) a Zoom tutorial on how to fight cybercrime — because in the time of COVID-19 they’re supposed to be working remotely. Bruce protests that they’re essential workers; Clark points out that they’re also role models and need to set a good example by staying at home. It’s an amusing premise, with a couple of nice details (e.g., Bruce needs glasses to read what’s onscreen), but after five minutes the constant references to their comic-book universe wear thin.

Snickerdoodle concerns a young woman still living at home (Kimmy Shields) announcing to her parents (Cindy and Perry Shields) that she’s going to clown college. “Why are you doing this to us?” her father asks. “Are you trying to send your mother and me to an early grave so you can inherit our valuable collection of antique cardboard boxes?” All the jokes are that level. What else to say?

Purgatoromeo is about what happens after the action in Romeo & Juliet, with Romeo (Edward Hong) finding himself in a waiting room — yes, in Purgatory — for processing before he goes up or down. A bureaucratic snafu sees him reunited there with Juliet (Josephine Chang). But are they bound for the same place? The reunion is cute; that’s about it.

Elemental is the sole drama. A scientist (Mattingly) who has discovered a new element with the potential to revolutionize the energy industry takes a meeting with a head muckety-muck (Branda Lock) at a powerful corporation. She tries to strongarm him but is hoist by her own petard. Playwright Brandon Cahela is trying to make a point about greed, but he doesn’t make it well. The muddy audio doesn’t help.

In The Aloha Life, a retired couple (Belinda Howe and Don Scholssman) vacationing and considering settling down in Hawaii get a text alert of a missile attack (we aren’t given any context). What to do in what may be your final minutes of life? Take it easy, I guess. This certainly isn’t a drama, but it doesn’t try very hard to be a comedy, so….

The Job Interview from Hell has Vanity (Lock) and Gluttony (Lloyd Robertson II) trying to find a replacement for Sloth (Daniel Gallai), who just hasn’t been carrying his weight. Potential candidates include Affectation (Rogelio Douglas III), Annoying Cellphone Usage (Kimberly Patterson), Sarcasm (Dionne Neish), and Mansplaining (Allen Barstow). Some fun performances here — particularly Douglas and Neish — but playwrights Chris Irby & Sean Freeman confuse mansplaining with simple pedanticism, and they seem to think the sin sloth is the same thing as moving like a sloth. More problematic is when your play feels redundant even though it’s less than 15 minutes.

Contact is a good closer, if for no other reason than because it bookends “Pick of the Vine” with pandemic themes — plus, it lasts no longer than it should. A pair of strangers (Barstow and Roberson) brush arms as they pass on the sidewalk. Slathering their offended limbs with sanitizer (funny), they almost come to fisticuffs over not being given proper social distance. “I would totally kick your ass right now if I wasn’t afraid of catching COVID-19!” But after being in lockdown for so long, isn’t it nice to have a little human contact? I hear ya, bruh.

If you are in Little Fish Theatre’s target demographic taste-wise and like your comedy lite and silly — and to be fair, that’s not me — there is zero question you’ll like this better than I did. But there’s no getting around the fact that the scripts this year were chosen less selectively than any of the five or six “Pick of the Vine”s I’ve seen, and the overall production value is no better than your basic Zoom call. Yes, there are extenuating circumstances. But it is what it is.

Little Fish Theatre’s “Pick of the Vine” streams on-demand through March 31. Cost: $20

For more information, visit LittleFishTheatre.org.