Playwright: Breahan Eve Pautsch. At: Hobo Junction Productions. (The Second Stage Theater, 3408 N. Sheffield). Phone: 800-838-3006; $15 . Runs through: Sept. 11
In television and film, we're used to aliens arriving on Earth with the intent of violently eradicating the human race in order to absorb our resources, not with the hope of peacefully assimilating somewhere in Wisconsin. That's the focus of In Pursuit, a new sci-fi comedy from Breahan Eve Pautsch and Hobo Junction Productions over at the Second Stage Theater.
A pair of blue aliens outfitted in men's shorts and polos plucked from a department store bargain rack are set to meet with a few human employees of a government agency tasked with providing work visas for such beings. One and Two as they're called, desperately hope to make a good impression using proper Earth-American party-hosting etiquette, but things begin to domino out of control starting with the arrival of their loud and rambunctious cousin (aptly named Three). Plus, their guests seem to bring their own peculiarities to the party.
Extraterrestrial science fiction and the stage do not exactly have the best relationship. It's not easy to construct an otherworldly character that an audience can definitively perceive as such in a live close-up medium, especially in a short play aiming for comedy. Although In Pursuit makes for a quick hour of silly fun, it loses its trajectory and ends up a bit chaotic and fruitless as a concept intended to provoke thought.
For one, the play descends into a farce rather quickly without fully capturing its alien characters. Considering One (Cassandra Clingon) and Two (Lauren Robertson) desperately wish to behave humanly, we don't get to observe them behaving completely as their own species. When their human counterparts enter the scene, the goofiness has already begun and too many characters need to be accounted for. These humans are also comedic caricatures with their own agendas and suddenly several pieces of the ensemble compete for our attention.
Soon thereafter, however, Pautsch's ideas do start to blossom in terms of the creative ways in which her play provokes a discourse on social issues. For example, One and Two have no gender, so when they must identify for the sake of paperwork, discussion ensues that exposes just how rooted sexism is in society. Also, because they are in a relationship, the play draws overt connections to gay marriage. At this point, the deftly clueless Special Agent Banks (Travis Barnhart) mentions One and Two could go to Iowa, except no one in America would recognize their union.
Yet just as we begin to see the meat behind the play's entire concept, the story devolves into a murder mystery and the alien characters literally take a seat, as do the amusing, vibrant talents of the actresses playing them. Enter General Rex Winters (Christopher Rex Jacobs), a mean-talking Southern Jewish gay man with a daughter, and what seems bold and unconventional gets a bit messy despite the boost in humor.
The mostly likable characters and old-fashioned shenanigans of In Pursuit make for successful entertainment in the most general sense, but as far as planting some unique thoughts with science fiction and properly utilizing the genre's best tools to bolster the humor, the play simply never makes it that far. The shuffle of subplots and over-the-top characters is too loud to let the ideas flourish half as much as the on-stage fun does.
