With a chill now in the air, fall has officially arrived,
putting me in just the right mood for “Spooky Stories in the Stacks” at
the Central Library. Starting in the Rundel Memorial
Building, our audience was brought downstairs to take our seats in the secluded
stacks, a section of the library the public doesn’t often get a chance to see.
There, city historians regaled us with tales of chilling stories from
Rochester’s past, including the infamous Fox Sisters, the mysterious death of
Laura Young, and the grisly fate of poor, inept murderer Marion Ira Stout. I
admit that, based on the program description, I was hoping for a walking tour of
the behind-the-scenes areas of the library while hearing these stories, but it
was still plenty of good creepy fun to hear about the seamier side of Rochester
lore.
For my final show at the Fringe, I headed over to MuCCC for the last performance of “The Hatchet Man,” a one-act from local playwright Mark Jabaut. Aiming
for something in the vein of “American Psycho,” the play is set at an anonymous
corporation, where a lowly salesman named Warren Peabody (Jeff Miller) has been
struggling to perform his duties. As the play opens, he receives a visit from
Mr. Grace (Morey Frazzi), a “hatchet man” brought in
by the company’s CEO to cut the business’s fat and
make massive layoffs. But as the two men talk, it becomes clear that Mr. Grace
has something else in mind entirely.
Revealing to Peabody that the CEO’s plan is to eventually
shutter the company entirely, he proposes that the solution is to murder their
boss and save both their jobs in the process. Reluctant at first, Peabody
eventually agrees. But when he takes more of a liking to the process than
expected, the tables start to turn in some surprising ways.
It’s easy to see what “The Hatchet Man” is going for: a
satire that makes the cutthroat nature of America’s business world horrifyingly
literal. But satire thrives when it has a solid narrative off which to build.
Here, the character’s motivations and actions change to support their satirical
function, but aren’t logical from an actual story sense, leaving things a bit
nebulous and ultimately dulling the point it’s trying to make. “The Hatchet
Man” is entertaining, and excellent performances from Miller and Frazzi go a long way in giving the material life, but the
show can’t help feeling like a rough draft for something much sharper.
This article appears in Sep 21-27, 2016.
