Christopher Lockheardt has made his name on sharp, witty, short plays produced at MadLab and around the country. The world premier of one of his first full-length dramas, Scritch Scritch, opened at MadLab this weekend in a production directed by Jim Azelvandre (assisted by Becky Horseman).
Rebecca (Kyle Jepson), feeling stuck in her life, decides to investigate the irritating scratching and pounding emanating from the walls. After consultation with her mother (Mary Sink) and best friend, Daisy (Shana Kramer), she finally calls in an exterminator (Cat McAlpine) who reveals it’s worse than suspected, a man has taken up residence in the bones of her house. Over the two acts of the play, there’s an inversion of the standard courtship rituals with a gimlet eye trained on the romcom tradition of violation growing into love in a kinder, gentler Stockholm Syndrome. One of the best devices here is the unseen man communicates entirely with scratches and thumps, signifying the emptiness of what he’s saying in the same sense grown-ups all sound like trombones in a Charlie Brown cartoon.
Acting’s great, throughout. Jepson’s Rebecca grounds everything in an emotional reality. Her appealing wryness gets lines that don’t make a lot of sense on the surface over in a way that never seems to show strain. Kramer as her best friend is a firecracker, a delightful burst of energy which makes the twist ending – which I’ll try not to reveal – half-work. McAlpine’s the hilarious, no-nonsense center of gravity and it’s fantastic when she returns in the second act.
Unfortunately, the commitment of the acting and the taut realism of Azelvandre’s direction highlights the hollowness of the writing. If the joke is that all men are literally vermin in the world of the play, the earlier conversations about boyfriends don’t make a lot of sense and, worse, it leaves all sorts of comic material on the table. The play as a metaphor for loneliness and the way the state of the world enforces the lowering of expectations again is an interesting concept left largely unexplored except in a couple beautiful exchanges Jepson has with Kramer and Sink. The conceit just doesn’t feel thought through enough and it also doesn’t have the crackling, wild energy of Lockheardt’s shorts.
There’s a great, 45-minute anarchic comedy here or there’s a great three-hour exploration of loneliness but Scritch Scritch never commits to either and tries to dance on shaky ground. There are flashes of the writer’s usual electricity, but not enough to leave the audience really feeling satisfied. MadLab’s commitment to new work is more than commendable but sometimes the material doesn’t work.
Scritch Scritch runs through September 3 with performances at 8:00 pm Friday and Saturday. For tickets and more info, visit madlab.net/scritch-scritch.