Men of Tortuga
If ever a play demonstrated that most men conduct business the way they once plotted schoolyard warfare, it’s Men of Tortuga, Furious Theatre Company’s latest seasonal offering. The smartly written play by first time playwright Jason Wells details the absurd plotting by executives of a fictional multinational corporation headed by Kit Maxwell (Dana J. Kelly, Jr.) to get rid of their competition. With his two sidekicks, Jeff (Alan Brooks) and Tom (William Salyers), Kit has solicited the advice of a professional hit man Taggart (Robert Pescovitz). Into the mix comes highly principled Allan Fletcher (Michael Matthys) who innocently interferes, determined to salvage a disastrous situation.
Without spelling out the exact nature of the impending catastrophe, playwright Wells sketches a scenario that grows progressively more absurd with each of Taggart’s hair-brained ideas, until the businessmen find themselves assembling a missile, and their head, Kit, has volunteered to execute the suicidal mission of exterminating the competition in a way that only heavy weaponry can achieve. The humorless Allan, however, seems to remain rational through it all. Wells masterfully paints the character into a corner and then provides a deus ex machina to retrieve him.
Furious company members Dana J. Kelly, Jr. and Robert Pescovitz, joined by Alan Brooks, Michael Matthys and William Salyers, present a tightly knit ensemble that feels as though it had all been together for years. Brooks in particular seems to feed off of Pescovitz’s brand of wild-eyed fanaticism with ham-fisted relish. Matthys injects tension in what might have come off as a dull role and Salyers plays a wide-eyed yes man with aplomb. Dana Kelly has the most nuanced role of Maxwell, a man at the end of his career.
Alexis Chamow, until recently an artistic associate at the Playhouse, provides on-point direction and increasingly mad-cap pacing on Designer Sara Ryung Clement’s spacious, grey-scale executive suite. Every production element from costuming by Leah Piehl to the “swish” of a hidden elevator (sound design by Doug Newell) melds unobtrusively to create the Furious’ trademark ultra realism onstage.
It is hilarious fun. But once the laughter has died away one recognizes with chilling clarity how close our culture has really come to such madness.
Men of Tortuga, now onstage through March 28, 2010 at the Pasadena Playhouse’s Carrie Hamilton Theatre, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena 91101. Tickets @ $32.00; students $10.00 rush; online at www.furioustheatre.org, or phone (626) 792-7116 for more information.