A stage is all they need

Time traveling duo improvises epic epochal journey

AS THE BOAT APPROACHES

FringeNYC shows run through Aug. 28, 2pm-midnight weekdays and noon-midnight on weekends. Tickets: $15 in advance at FringeNYC.org or 866-468-7619; $18 at the door. Discount passes for multiple shows. For show dates, times and venue info, visit FringeNYC.org.

BY SAM SPOKONY | Don’t be alarmed when you enter the theatre to find two men pacing across the stage, miming emphatically amidst the pre-curtain chatter — just take a seat and let your imagination run wild.

From tip to stern, “As the Boat Approaches” stays true to its minimalist mantra: no props, no set — just two actors playing an absurdly large number of characters. Justin O’Neill and Jonathon Gordon (both recent Brown grads) begin their maze-like, improv-laden tale as two anonymous guys, apparently stranded on an island, as, of course, that boat approaches from the distance. But instead of following a traditional storyline, the pair is off and running — starting from the very beginning of time.

After symbolically linking arms as two prehistoric atoms (and subsequently flying apart in order to create the universe), O’Neill and Gordon transition effortlessly from dinosaurs to sailors and pilots to conquistadors — tossing themselves back and forth through time with nary a hesitant glance. The bare bones setting does no harm to the result; O’Neill and Gordon establish a thorough grip on the audience’s collective mind that they never let go — as their well-controlled senses of timing, verbal inflection and physicality draw a boatload of laughs with ease (no matter how they decide to improvise within each scene).

After ambient sound effects and lighting allow the journey through the epochs to run its course, the shifting personalities finally settle — taking the form of high school graduates, Malcolm (O’Neill) and Benjamin (Gordon), who will be attending Yale in the fall. After a performance driven by what seemed to be an insatiable need for unpredictability, it is within these more plot-driven narratives that the improvised nature play begins to lose steam. Not all is lost though, as O’Neill and Gordon display a finely tuned ability to balance the wide range of emotions their unfortunate characters face — as, through circumstances out of their control, Malcolm and Benjamin end up stranded on the way to Yale’s student orientation.

Tellingly, it’s easy to discern that director Justin Kuritzkes is a college student himself (at Brown). While the overall work is great, he too frequently ties up Malcolm and Benjamin in overbearingly introspective, clichéd, school-oriented chatter during those later moments — falling back on the more traditional aspects of dialogue and character creation that he freely (and quite successfully) did without for most of the play. It wasn’t particularly frustrating to see the pair talking excitedly about how to approach their budding futures; it just seemed like a story that could have been told in a different performance, and it became a bit superfluous when tacked on to the free-flowing originality that had come before.

“As the Boat Approaches” is worth seeing — if not for all of its lighthearted existential leaps through time, then certainly for O’Neill and Gordon’s brilliantly absurd impressions of colonial French soldiers. Imagination, as they prove many times over, really can do wonders.