Taking creative risks is the name of the game for Fallout Theater, the improv/sketch comedy/stand-up venue founded in 2018 and located in a former fallout shelter in the basement of the near-century-old York Rite building in downtown Austin.
With “yes… and” echoing in the duct work above its small, black box stage, it should come as no surprise that the powers-that-be have agreed to offer something different – a piece of short-form theatre (yup, with the proper “r-e,” not the pedestrian “e-r”) – for its early Saturday night spot, followed by the regularly scheduled all-star improv show.
Dead. Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the End is an original debut play, a dark comedy by Roy Lazorwitz and Louie Sanchez, two sketch comedy writers/performers at Fallout Theater who have recently created Wise Guy Theater Co. for their playwriting. They direct the show as well, with Patrick Neese (set design) and Tory Granfield (props) making the most of a limited budget and tech not made for this type of performance art.
Dead. comes across as a play penned and directed by sketch comedy artists. This is a good thing in that the characters are clever creations, the banter between them is often wicked smart and filled with outside-the-box observations, and the work rides on comedic rhythms. There are abrupt blackouts at the end of each of its five scenes, which Fallout Theater regulars and other comedy club denizens will find familiar.
The downside is that the dramatic arc that typically guides a play’s story and dictates its storytelling is missing. In its place is a through line – more of an improv prompt, actually – that the voiceover at the start of the show suggests is “matters of mortality.” The play then proceeds with a procession of sketch comedy scenes that are mostly linear and unrelated save for that tag-you’re-it through line, and those abrupt blackouts at the end come across as odd for non-comedy club denizens.
First we meet therapist Sidney (Becca Wrench) and patient Allison (Sam Gloor), who are engaged in a session with a deadly outcome. We then meet Leo (Andrew Michulka) and Gabriel (Kyle Romero), two killers for hire who question their chosen profession. We meet siblings Lola (Emma Holder) and Elliott (Kyle Irion), who learn some hard truths at their grandfather’s funeral. In the fourth and fifth scenes, the characters’ narratives overlap and matters of mortality come full circle.
The cast consists of players with more improv, stand-up, and sketch comedy experience than straight play performances, and you can see some of them champing at the bit to riff a little and give the comedy in this dark comedy top billing. But you can also sense their restraint, as if they’ve been repeatedly reminded over the course of rehearsals that they are engaging in the artform born in ancient Greece and not the one born in a trunk behind a Vaudeville stage.
The end result is a fun but fraught affair; a piece of straight theatre struggling against itself – its structure, its performers, its surroundings – to be a little more bent. Perhaps Lazorwitz and Sanchez have a hybrid short-form play or two in them that can both house a dramatic arc and accommodate moments of improvisation. Hopefully the brain-trust at Fallout Theater will once again open up its comedy lineup for something different.
Dead. Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the End
Fallout Theater, 616 Lavaca
falloutcomedy.com
Through July 29
Running time: Approx. 1 hr.
This article appears in July 21 • 2023 and July 7 • 2023.