F-Stop

F-Stop is a bit of a departure for the B Street Theatre, though not a big one. Many of the familiar elements from past B Street shows are present:There’s punchy, nimble dialogue that has fun with genre boilerplate—involving a cynical, hard-boiled photojournalist; an egotistical actress whose specialty is doing mindless martial arts films as “Chop Suzy,” an equally egotistical African military dictator who collects “Chop Suzy” movies, and a good-hearted African lad who literally goes the extra mile as the photojournalist’s assistant.

There’s a business proposition and a romantic dismissal in a restaurant. (B Street characters seem to live half their lives in restaurants and bars.) And, to satisfy some sort of ongoing need to comfort audiences by helping them feel literate, F-Stop (like many shows these days) sports a quick monologue lifted from a genuine literary classic (this time it’s Chekhov’s Three Sisters—so when will a local theater have the gumption to stop name-dropping and produce it?).

And yes, the f-word bubbles up early and often—the opportunity to make wordplay out of the show’s title was too tempting for playwright Olga Humphrey to resist.

But F-Stop ventures beyond the formula at intervals. For starters, the majority of the story takes place in Africa, and the cast includes two African-American actors (playing Africans) … the first time in years we’ve seen a black actor on this stage. (Maybe someday, we’ll see an African-American playing an African-American at the B Street.)

The story also punches through with a brief but very vivid scene in which the brutal consequences of crossing an egotistical, out-of-control dictator are underlined in dramatically personal, tragic terms (darker than the B Street usually gets). That scene is followed by another involving an ethical choice, appropriately presented in dubious shades of gray.

Elisabeth Nunziato is in high gear throughout as the martial arts actress; Jamie Jones sustains a romantic glow in a quieter role. Hansford Prince is the devil’s dessert as the dictator, getting a lot of mileage out of the way he plays with licorice sticks. Gil Bernardi looks good as the journalist, though his vocal delivery gets a little too flat and passionless in some scenes. Anthony D’Juan does well in his first professional appearance, while Anthony Shank generates laughs through a string of caricatures. Director Kurt Johnson could still clean up some choppiness into the first half, and several of the many set changes take a little too long. —