'The Pitchforks' at Convergence-Continuum Fails to Deliver the Horror or Drama

The Pitchforks Credit: Photo Credit: Cory Molner.

There’s a saying that advises: When someone tells you who they are, believe them. That is smart when dealing with people. But when a theatrical production or some NFL quarterbacks (lookin’ at you #4) tell you who they are, it’s often untrue—sometimes calamitously so.

Such is the case with The Pitchforks by Andrew Kramer, a world premiere now at the Convergence-Continuum theater. Like a little kid at Halloween, this play dresses up in the trappings of a horror story with blood-red strobing lights and creepy sound effects, but it doesn’t have the courage of its own supposed convictions. In addition, the script is bifurcated and complicated as it spends the last hour of the two-hour show delivering a pallid lecture on the lack of true gay representation in film.

Yes, The Pitchforks pretends to be a horror film as four young men gather at a sleazy, abandoned motel for a gay sexcapade of some sort. This is something they do every year and, as we learn, they are married men with children. But this is their annual time to cut loose from their dull lunch-packing and PTA routine as dads to enjoy some cock gobbling (staged in the dark, of course) with D&S games thrown in for good measure.

Turns out, the scuzzy motel is also haunted by a revenant who apparently doesn’t like gay men. Or maybe it’s just pissed there’s no mints on the pillows. In any case, this tall apparition shows up to furnish some additional chills and thrills. But it’s about as lame as Uncle Harry putting on a bedsheet and going “Boo!”

When the first act ends, the actors are told by an off-stage voice to reset and do it all over again, as if they were rehearsing a play and not performing a finished piece. This breaks the faint premise of this being a film, since films are shot in small increments and then stitched together later by an editor. It’s a small glitch, but a telling one for a script that postures as being infinitely wise about the cinema.

In Act Two, the four actors who played the gay gents are now recast as three movie producers and an assistant who are mulling over the film script they just read, called “The Pitchforks.” They are all in agreement that the film is too gay, except for the assistant, a gay man, who is fine with it.

The discussion is led by the screenwriter Chord (David L. Munnell, who was the Revenant earlier). Munnell is a fine actor but even he can’t bring to life Chord’s droning lecture on gay films and all related matters.

As forced and un-spooky as the first act was, this transition to a bunch of guys sitting around a table in a conference room is jarring, but not in a good way. The writer of The Pitchforks (the play) is so intent on sharing every scrap of his knowledge about the segment of moviedom involving gay lives and gay narratives that he forgets to make sure that some character should have something at stake for the drama to come alive.

Unfortunately for the audience, Chord is only faced with rejection of his script, which is the mother’s milk of any aspiring writer in any genre. And it’s hardly a reason for the supposedly horrific ending when Chord deals with his producers—not in a satisfyingly horrific way but kind of like (I Dream of) Jeannie twitching her nose.

Under the direction of Eva Nel Brettrager, the four actors who play the gay men and the producers—Logan Andrews, Brandon Alexander-Smith, David Lenahan and Brandon Briggs—exert enormous energy in their task, especially in Act One.

But this richly flawed play does no justice to horror films, scary plays, or gay people of any persuasion.

The Pitchforks
Through October 26 at Convergence-Continuum Theater performing at The Liminis Theater, 2438 Scranton Road, Cleveland, 216-687-0074, convergence-continuum.org.

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