By Barry Willis
Competing doomsday scenarios form the basis of Aaron Loeb’s incisive and hilarious Ideation, at Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre through October 28.
One part Dr. Strangelove and one part No Exit, the tale features a group of high-level consultants struggling to work up proposals to dispose of millions of people while arousing as little attention as possible. Three of them—Brock (Mike Pavone), Ted (Justin Thompson), and Dr. Min Le (Phi Tran) arrive at company headquarters, jet-lagged from a month-long scam in Crete.
… they realize that they have stepped into some extremely deep doo-doo from which there may be no escape…
They meet their supervisor Hannah (Gina Alvarado) in a conference room, where they learn that they have exactly ninety minutes to produce a plan for their CEO, a disembodied voice called J.D. Annoyed by the presence of a young intern named “Scooter” (Lauren DePass), they’re slow to get to work until the interloper leaves the room.
Adroitly directed by David L. Yen, the tale is slow to launch for the same reason: the Scooter distraction wastes a good ten minutes until the core group feels comfortable enough to start “ideating”—generating concepts that may or may not work in a world theoretically threatened with a virus that could wipe out the entire human species.
Choking back their fundamental revulsion, the consultants come up with concepts such as “liquidation centers,” “disposal sites,” “self-service mass graves,” “acid pits that can melt bone,” and problems dispersing large quantities of “biosludge” once the victims are dead.
They willingly accept the conceptual challenge as a more-or-less academic exercise, assigning the nuts-and-bolts design to Dr. Le, owner of both a Harvard MBA and an engineering degree from Georgia Tech. A subplot involves an office romance between him and Hannah that could scuttle her comfortable upper-middleclass life, but the bulk of the comedy is the escalation of absurdly horrific proposals and rising personal tensions as deadline approaches. Ted and Brock even engage in a quite realistic shoving match as their frustrations build.
It’s all quite funny until the consultants figure out that they themselves may be disposable, or that they are competing against other groups, all of whom may be at risk for extermination. At that point they realize that they have stepped into some extremely deep doo-doo from which there may be no escape. From a slow launch, the play rises like fireworks exploding on the Fourth of July.
Written pre-pandemic in 2013, Ideation was originally produced at SF Playhouse to rave reviews. That show’s cast went to New York with it, where it ran for a month. Among the best contemporary comedies, it’s a prescient piece of theater.
The current show at the cavernous California benefits from new raked seating near the stage, but is marred by an adjacent music club whose thumping bass and drums force the actors to shout over the noise. For that reason, ticket-buyers are encouraged to attend a Saturday matinee. Left Edge is producing the show on Thursday and Friday evenings at 7:30 and on Saturdays at 1 p.m.—no Saturday evening or Sunday performances.
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ASR NorCal Executive Editor Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact: barry.m.willis@gmail.com.
| Production | Ideation |
|---|---|
| Written by | Aaron Loeb |
| Directed by | David L. Yen |
| Producing Company | Left Edge Theatre Co. |
| Production Dates | Through October 28th |
| Production Address | The California 528 7th Street Santa Rosa CA 95401 |
| Website | www.leftedgetheatre.com |
| Telephone | (707) 664-7529 |
| Tickets | $20-$29 |
| Reviewer Score | Max in each category is 5/5 |
| Overall | 3.75/5 |
| Performance | 4/5 |
| Script | 4.5/5 |
| Stagecraft | 3/5 |
| Aisle Seat Review Pick? | ---- |