Suck My Tongue

What I liked

Ryan Lisman and Spencer Weitzel are giving real performances here, they just happen to be at odds with one another, and the rest of the cast. But you can tell they were headed in the right direction and got sidelined by lackluster direction. I can’t blame them for that. The second half of the ensemble have some painful moments. A particularly cringe-worthy section is where one of the characters is answering the phone in zany voices. It comes across like a really bad second grade skit. The pacing is so off, and the scene feels like it lasted 20-minutes. Cut it – PLEASE. You don’t need that scene. Does nothing to develop character or further plot and it’s aggressively unfunny. Cut it. The actor was clearly not directed properly. It felt like everyone was left to their own devices with no sense of the theme of the show.

What I didn't like

I know, I know – it sure sounds like I am being extra mean, but it’s only because I know some of the individuals involved with this piece can do better. I’ve seen them do better. I know they will do better in the future. But this show? THIS show?

This show doesn’t need to exist. It offers nothing fresh or exciting to the theatrical zeitgeist, it’s not in the least bit clever, insightful, or rewarding, and it doesn’t know what it is, why it is, or how to be any of it. It’s the fifth of the playwright’s shows I’ve seen, and I’ve enjoyed a couple of them tremendously. “American Conspiracy” was well-written and a total blast. This felt like a show he might have written 25-years ago and put on a shelf. Even then, it would have ‘sucked’.

My overall impression

This show felt as if it were directed by AI. The performances were all over the place – everyone at different levels with their own unique pacing, and no one ever felt like they were real characters in the same show. The blocking was amateurish, with more upstaging than I am accustomed to seeing in a blackbox space. The script didn’t know what it wanted the show to be, and a third of the entire piece is characters on the phone with people we don’t know, which is one of the laziest things a playwright can do. The characters keep talking about how tense the situation is, but they never once make us feel that tension. What happens never seems like a big deal to the audience – certainly not enough for an entire show. It makes insultingly simplified points about ‘cancel culture’ and ‘woke-ism’, while also being intentionally offensive in a very outdated sort of way. These characters don’t feel like they have ever existed, and thank God for that.