REVIEW: Jerry and Tom (Idle Muse Theatre)

Searing thriller or side-splitting farce?  Who knows.

Idle Muse Theatre Company presents:

 

Jerry and Tom

By Rick Cleveland
Directed by Lenny Wahlberg
At the side project, 1439 W. Jarvis Ave.
Through March 21st (more info)

Reviewed by Ian Epstein 

It’s unclear what brought Jerry (Matt Dyson) and Tom (Brad Woodward) together.  It’s unclear why they’re both in the line of work that they’re in.  It’s unclear who the man with the black bag over his head with his hands bound behind his back, sitting in the spotlight, is (though the role of corpse-recurrent is played by Brian Bengston). 

But it is clear what will happen to the man in the black bag when the phone rings and it is clear that Tom has done this many times before–has answered the phone, has green-lighted close quarters death by buckshot – even if Jerry, wielding the weapon like an amateur with a baton in a parade, is the one playing our trigger-prone young hot shot. And what is the natural response of our corpse-in-waiting to impending assassination? Tell bad animal jokes.

As the rest of the play unfolds in multiple vignettes spanning years of training and development as a team, it becomes clear that Jerry and Tom are hitmen.  They’re not your thrilling, glamorous, Hollywood hitmen living life bruised and wandering the world over with forged identities or double-O assignments. And they’ve got no clear relationship to the comedic cat-and-mouse duo Tom and Jerry.  Nope. These are just your everyday hitmen, with kids and wives and all the burdens of regular life tucked away offstage and only occasionally discussed in the long spells of waiting to kill-off targets of indeterminate importance for a clandestine, potentially criminal organization with unknown leadership.

Lenny Wahlberg‘s directing would benefit from tidier, tighter transitions, although good blues in the dark does provide some enjoyment to audience members stranded in it.  Rick Cleveland‘s script overflows with crude situational jokes and it’s never clear whether the show is supposed to be taken seriously or comedically, as it lacks the high-stakes pacing, poetry or strong choice direction to support being a drama and accomplishing both.  Though the program explains the duration of time between scenes, they unfold so similarly that there’s no apparent logic that justifies the jumps in time and the play feels instead like a linear litany of melodramatic death after death after death.  If Idle Muse Theatre’s Jerry and Tom was trying for a searing, seat-gripping, anxious thriller (like Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth), it didn’t succeed.  If Jerry and Tom was trying for a side-splitting Chaplin-esque romp where the same character dies again and again and again and can’t seem to escape death, it came closer but ultimately failed to elevate the stakes high enough to become that kind of farce.  In the end, we’re just annoyingly disinterested.

 

Rating: ★

 

Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for seniors. Thursday nights are industry nights. $5 ticket with headshot/resume.  Running Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8:PM, Sunday matinee at 3PM, through March 21.

Cast: Jerry – Matt Dyson, Tom – Brad Woodard, and Billy, Karl, Vic, etc. – Brian Bengston.

Design Team: Lighting Design: Steven Hill, Fight Choreography: Greg Poljacik