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Theater: Raising the 'Boom'
Nachtrieb latest milks world cataclysm, Craigslist for all their worth

by Lee Brady

Marin's own playwright, Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, has audiences rolling in the aisles, but Boom isn't just a laugh riot.

Well sure, Joan Mankin is funny; this long-time Bay Area treasure could get yuks out of Medea. Mankin's Barbara, the dedicated and ambitious suck-up director of a museum whose stories and artifacts show how we all began, is in total control. She pulls on a joystick and the story stops; she sends jolts of electricity that drop the reluctant, baby-hating Jo (Blythe Foster) and her wannabe impregnator Jules (Nicholas Pelczar) to the floor.

But humor is the least of what makes this apocalyptic tale of a shy scientist whose best friends are fish. (Erik Flatmo creates the claustrophobic living room-science lab and fall-out shelter set). When the fish start sleeping 18 hours a day, Jules knows that the biggest comet since the ice age is on its way, and that it is up to him to create new life. And so the verbal and physical conflicts begin, as Jo—answering an ad on Craigslist for a bout of "intensely, significant coupling"—enters and jumps the virginal (and turns out, homosexual) Jules, flattening him like one of Barbara's electrical jolts.

Director Ryan Rilette and his two supple young actors make these sudden pratfalls look both easy and comic.

But the clever lines and show-stopping appearances by Mankin become predictable and it is only when Jo delivers an emotional monologue about why she refuses to be a mother—even to save the human race—that the true drama takes hold. Jules doesn't emote, he explains; a true nerd scientist, his shout of triumph, "I was right," when the comet hits is his big emotional moment.

In the playwright's breakout comedy, Hunter Gatherers, clever dialogue, surprising physical action and an ingenious plot served the actors well. In Boom, these exceptionally talented actors, frequently seen in Bay Area theaters, serve Nachtrieb's highly fertile imagination.

NOW PLAYING

Boom runs through Dec. 6 at the Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley; 415/388-5208, www.marintheatre.org .

Tell Lee to break a leg at freshleebrady@gmail.com