PICK UP AX
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Pick Up Ax, a study of the collision between high-tech ideas and below-the-belt realities, is peppered with the jargon of several interfacing subcultures: the computer industry, science-fantasy freaks (references abound to Star Wars and Star Trek, to Lost in Space and The Lord of the Rings), recreational drug users (“I’m down to stems and seeds,” says a man who’s left with no professional options), rock and roll fans, and computer-game players. Like playwrights David Mamet, in Speed-the-Plow and Glengarry Glen Ross, Jerry Sterner, in Other People’s Money, and Sharon Evans, in Girls, Girls, Girls, Live on Stage, Totally Rude, Clarvoe is adept at using a specialized vocabulary to motor a universal theme, while also instructing the audience in that vocabulary. I knew, for instance, that “bogosity” means–to quote the “users guide” handily printed in Northlight’s program–“the degree to which something is bogus,” but I’d never heard the term “bogon” before (“a person who is bogus or says bogus things”).
But when Clarvoe says in a program note that when looking for a title he scrutinized his script for “the words and phrases that turn up the reverb,” one wonders where Clarvoe’s characters stop and Clarvoe himself begins. Certainly the limitations of those characters are the same limitations that prevent Pick Up Ax from being more than merely a diverting amusement, despite its aspirations to serious social criticism and ethical exploration. Like the 70s blues-rock and the fantasy-quest computer games that obsess the play’s heroes (the title is a command in one such game), Pick Up Ax puts a glossy new spin on old ideas.
The three-man cast pack plenty of energy into their roles, though they can’t finally overcome the script’s superficiality. Kevin Crowley has the showiest role, as the mentally hyperactive Keith; casually somersaulting onto a couch or manically playing air guitar, he captures both the goofy, valley-boyish charm and microchip-on-the-shoulder sullenness of this emotionally arrested adolescent. Jim Leaming is the gentle, bewildered Brian, gradually realizing that his illusions are unraveling.
