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[title]In the frequently enjoyable short-play octet The Wundelsteipen (and Other Difficult Roles for Young People), writer Nick Jones lets the twistiest bits of his mind unfurl. He launches a bouncy cast through a quick succession of skits, including theater-geek sketches (Everyman rewritten as Everybaby, complete with a onesie-clad Death), serial-killer goofs (murderers have parents too!) and some sadistic yuks about Caligula. Despite the show's scruffy charm, the usual trouble with ten-minute work applies. Jones is enormously clever, but his gimmicks rarely develop past their first beat, and the episodic event devolves into a repetitive series of strong opening chords and dying falls.
Wundelsteipen toys with the “that's inappropriate!” button: Ostensibly, we are attending a youth-drama-camp evening at which every single playlet deals with sex and/or death. Of course, a middle-schooler can't actually play a freaky sex fairy (Briana Pozner appears as the titular Wundelsteipen), so the transgression button gets twiddled and no more. We're left with gleeful, easily forgotten naughtiness—something to have a beer before and a cocktail after.
This kind of profane goofballery makes a good match for the Bats, the hardworking non-Equity company at the Flea. Or at least, it is wonderful for the boys. Jones writes broadly, which somehow reaps better rewards for the men: Go-to Bat Tommy Crawford ambles through nearly every piece with a Mephistopholean glint in his eye; Dominic Spillane kills it as a sleepy Caligula; Eric Folks has a ball playing a college lunk with face blindness (“Dude? Are you really my roommate?”). The women mostly play weepy moms, shrill vixens or weepy, vixenish moms. But you'll never notice: Tom Costello keeps everyone dashing around, changing scenes and hoisting tents. Their energy is infectious, the will to shock rather sweet. Will that do? Just ask Everybaby. When Death came looking for him, he turned to his friend Cuteness for help. And lo, Cuteness was not enough.
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