Shh!
For a revue about censorship, Shh! certainly offers a lively brand of commentary.
The concept behind the show is sly: six contestants in a reality show (New Exhibition room players Melissa Barker, Nathaniel Gundy, Hannah Husband, Chuong Pham, Alejandro Simoes, and Christina Watka) seek to avoid being eliminated through song, sketch comedy, and direct appeals to the audience. The ongoing theme of censorship may be a mere happenstance, but it informs the general idea of being chucked out of the national conversation: a terrible fate, in the realm of identity politics, but also a denial of basic democracy.
The sketches take place in a variety of public and private settings: a group of commuters on the subway give voice to their personal thoughts ("All I want to do is scream, ’Cocksucking come dumpster!’" exclaims one commuter); two teens engage in sexting, and both end up in jail; a gay man (played, with understated wryness, by a woman) talks about self-censorship at work; an advocate for so-called "conversion" therapy for gays laments that the media seems to muzzle his message that gays can be "cured."
Some skits have a Monty Python quality about them, such as an episode set at "The Cuss Abatement and Control Academy," where students learn how not to swear; offered the most outrageous scenarios to respond to in polite terms, they just can’t help bursting out with a few choice oaths.
One gag finds a group of little kids playing a game of gross-out tag; when the antics swerve into a pantomime of sexual violence, the immediate joke is underscored by doubts about what kids really learn from their parents.
Indeed, the entire centuries-old debate about what to allow and what to censor in print and other media has always centered around children and what their impressionable little minds might come away with if exposed to adult material. The flip-side of that argument is that it certainly will do civilization no favors to infantilize and sanitize human life and human expression to the point of suitability for tiny tots; "Shh!" operates on the notion that such sanitization infantilizes not only civilization, but the putative adults in charge of running it.
At times, the material transcends gags and routines and reaches toward the artfully satirical: the dance of liberty and oppression is depicted as frankly sexual, and overtly violent, as a secret service agent and a protester grapple and pant. "Where have you been all my life?" gasps the agent, as he struggles to slap handcuffs on his quarry.
In another passage, two young men debate the most direct route to the affections of a female nudist (who is covered most inadequately by the large bag of potato chips she lugs around). One young man wants to sing her a tender ballad; the other changes the lyrics into a randy skankfest of a song. Faced with her full, unshielded glory, both young men lose their nerve.
The material is raw and funny, and the production is chic in a minimalist way; books and hoola hoops adorn the set by Christina Watka (the culture versus childhood theme again). The sound design by Rachel Kelsey and lighting by Emma Schimminger are inventive and well executed; the cast do a marvelous job with multiple roles, some of which carry over from sketch to sketch.
Director A. Nora Long keeps a light but steady grasp over the play and the players; the material seldom slips into gratuitous territory, but by the same token it seldom feels preachy. The watchword here (perhaps the most squelched, and celebrated, word in our language) is fun.
"Shh!" plays through July 25 at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston.
The show is free of charge; donations are appreciated. Reservations are available via www.brownpapertickets.com (please note that reservations expire 10 minutes before curtain time).
