The cruelty of conversion therapy for queer teens is well known by now, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room in the theatrical canon for a dark comedy on the topic and its implications.
Los Angeles-based playwright Preston Choi’s world premiere “Limp Wrist on the Lever” aims to be just that, focusing on three (very adult-looking) kids making a break from a conversion therapy camp run by a (as we soon discover) psychopathic counselor.
Their efforts signal, humorously, a societal change: “limp wrist on the lever” indeed.
But even a comedy, especially on a serious topic such as this, needs to be grounded in some sort of reality, however skewed. In this production, by the always-adventurous and risk-taking Crowded Fire Theater, there is simply no visible attempt to make us believe in—well, anything.
At the beginning, the most levelheaded of the three runaways, Anita (Ashley Jaye), is trying to hitchhike out of the woods where she’s escaped from the nearby camp. (The woods, interestingly designed by Jenna Lauren Carroll, are depicted by hanging ropes, which seem to conjure coercion and violence.) Anita is desperate to get back to her sister, although we never do find out exactly what that’s all about.
More egregiously, under Becca Wolff’s overheated direction, there’s not one iota of believability in supposedly cool-headed Anita’s antics. Thumb out, she’s merely clowning around, clearly trying to entertain the audience rather than actually get a lift.
She’s eventually joined by two other runaways: kind-hearted Charli (River Bermudez Sanders) and ruthless, murderous Zo (linda maria girón).
Most of the play’s first act is taken up with hysterical arguments among the three about how to pull off their escape, liberate the other campers and basically change society. Their arguments are divided all too neatly into three conflicting visions.
The endless, wordy arguments are a problem with the writing throughout the two-act play. Discussion about how to proceed, what’s the right (the moral, the most effective, the safest) thing doesn’t effectively advance the plot. It slows it down to a wordy crawl.
There’s action too, involving violent confrontations with the counselor, played by Kenny Scott, the most believable of the four. But the three quarrelsome escapees and the counselor each stick resolutely to their own position. Rather than representing actual, conflicted humans, the characters are ultimately one-dimensional.
Although unconvinced by their cohorts’ arguments, they do occasionally capitulate for the sake of expedience, but no one really changes, and that, theatrically speaking, is problematic.
The occasional presence of a silent ghost, cleverly portrayed by Annie Fraser and Tim Garcia, is a welcome surreal touch. The ghost is the only character not striving to be funny, and that’s a welcome element amidst all the hysteria.
But what that ghost represents remains frustratingly murky.
Crowded Fire Theater’s “Limp Wrist on the Lever” continues through Oct. 4 at Potrero Stage, 1695 18th St., San Francisco. Tickets are $25 to $100 at crowdedfire.org.