Theater Review - Playing chicken

A 1970s sitcom could provide the premise of Lisa Schlesinger’s Manny and Chicken at the BP, having its world premiere at PushPush Theater. A white boy named Manny (Matt Stanton) and a black girl named Charlotte (Melodie Rodgers) unwillingly share a household when their single parents get hitched.

Instead of seeking humor and life lessons in the “Diff’rent Strokes” of the new family, Schlesinger pursues more complex points about the nature of human relationships. Her characterizations can be so eccentric that the play’s intentions are nearly opaque, but as we get to know the two 15-year-olds, the themes clear up.

Initially Manny and Charlotte get along like cats and dogs, taunting each other and playing games of chicken, which in this case means riding bicycles toward a dangerous object and seeing whose nerve fails first. Then Manny claims to see a ghostly woman in red (Tiffany Brown), who may be Charlotte’s deceased mother.

The kids are all right compared to their parents, who seem bonkers, frankly. Charlotte’s dad Paulie (Michael Van Osch) is a construction worker fixated on his rituals of leaving for work and returning home. Manny’s mom Joy (Shelby Hofer) is prone to staring out windows or looking for work while dragging around a suitcase full of rocks. Their dialogue tends to be filled with Latin phrases and specifications about bridge engineering, so apart from the occasional poetic image (“The bridge is like a neck”), it’s all but impossible to get a fix on the roles or what they represent.

Perhaps the playwright intends for the difficulty in dramatic style to mirror the difficulty in domestic dynamics. As the teenagers become wary friends, opening up about their absent parents, it gets easier to identify with Manny and Chicken. Following the intermission, the second act takes a rather startling turn for the erotic, with the adults engaging in bondage and role-playing and the young people playing a sexually charged game of truth or dare. The teenagers’ consistently surprising relationship, captured by the truthful performances of Stanton and Rodgers, make Manny and Chicken at the BP into more than a muddled portrait of family dysfunction.

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Manny and Chicken at the BP plays through Nov. 16 at PushPush Theater, 1123 Zonolite Road. Wed.-Sat. 8 p.m.; Sun 5 p.m. $12-$16. 404-892-7876. www.pushpushtheater.com.??