One stormy night, six strangers stagger into an Orlando dive bar in search of shelter and unwittingly become experimental subjects in the biker-chic bartender’s (Sarai Goley) secret sociological study to discover whether COVID has caused a positive evolution in the human genome. For the rest of the evening, the increasingly inebriated patrons — who include an irritable vet (John Moughan), an environmental activist (Komal Patel), an oily politician (Juan Robert) and a drag queen (Kevin Fox) — play Scooby-Doo over a missing bottle of valuable liquor while arguing about hot-button issues.
At this bar where nobody knows your name, there’s really nobody to root for among the bickering cast of shallow stock characters. The actors do their best to recite the densely written dialogue (by Goley and Fox, who also direct) as rapidly and energetically as they can, but with little sense of comedic timing, their jokes generated only a handful of genuine laughs throughout the preview performance. The plot ticks off many boxes on the Fringe Bingo card — lip-synced disco anthems, progressive political pontificating on a literal soapbox, and heavy alcohol consumption — but the comedy never kicks into high gear and the dramatic stakes are too low to be engaging.
Perhaps I’m too cynical, but this show’s underlying premise that the pandemic made Americans more empathetic to others’ perspectives seems patently counterfactual for anyone who can read a newspaper. But in deference to the show’s departing message — “don’t be an asshole” — I’ll end by simply saying I really appreciated Bryn Currie’s realistically rendered set, which made me want to walk up on stage and pour myself a cold one.
Orlando Fringe: Tickets and times for “The Bottleneck Effect”
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Seth Kubersky
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