I’ve said it many times but I really love the chance to see new material on stage. As much as I love the classics it’s refreshing to be presented with something fresh and original (or at least fresh and original to me.) Even if the work isn’t perfect I’m grateful to the company for thinking outside the box. Such was my experience with ThreePenny Theatre Company’s new production of [sic]. I thought the play itself was just ok but the creativity of the company was loads of fun.

My favorite part of the production is the set by Jonah Kirkhart. It tells the tale of 3 neighbors in an apartment complex and how they become involved in each other’s lives. In order to show the movement inside and outside the apartments the set cleverly uses colored doors for one side and then flips them around to white for the other. This expands the small black box space and keep some movement in a mostly dialogue based play.

Since this is a new play to me I’m not sure how much of director Hannah Orr’s choices are part of the tradition of this play or her own unique staging but it definitely tries a lot of to entertain and enlighten. For example, there are both hand held shadow puppets used by the actors and silhouette style shadows with an audiotrack in sections. The audiotrack was muddled and difficult to understand which hurt some of the enjoyment of these creative touches. Also some of the aspects of the script didn’t seem to add much to the story and felt a little random. For example, I’m not sure what Frank’s training as an auctioneer added to the story or his character since most of his arc was about his relationships.

The main strength of the production outside of the cute set with the doors is the 3 leads. They are all at the top of their game and particularly Camas has a manic energy that works great for Frank. Juls Marino has to sell a lot of the comedy as Theo and Taylor Wallace did a lot with a little in her role as Babette. I especially liked how she used a phone cord to get more tangled with as the night went on. It’s a great example of how using props can help convey character.

The problem I had with this play is I simply didn’t find it very funny. The crowd I was with seemed to be laughing much more than I did but it all felt fairly pedestrian when it came to laughs. It was also a little confusing because my audience never really clapped for most of the performance so perhaps that impacted my overall enjoyment? Not sure.

Still I appreciate seeing something new with [sic] and especially with ThreePenny’s ‘pay what you can’ offer it’s worth recommending for the performances and cute set alone. It is playing through June 14th and tickets can be purchased here.

[sic] is a play by Melissa James Gibson (I have no idea what the title means or is referring too.) It was written in 2001 and premiered Off-Broadway that year.

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