Review: bombs in your mouth is Very Tasty

It’s not too much of a spoiler to say the show opens with a bit of a surprise, a moment that literally brings the audience to its feet. Once that moment passes, we settle in to observe a pair of siblings—the sister that got away and the brother that did not. And the force from which they did and did not escape? A huge asshole of a father, recently passed, who, despite his physical absence and his daughter’s years-long attempt to eradicate him from her life, continues hold both his children in a tight grip from the great beyond.

The premise is hardly fresh—more than a few of us cling to the theory that fucked up parents beget fucked up children and even those who seek therapeutic relief are lucky if they can evolve more than a few baby steps from what created them. Still, writer Corey Patrick manages to do a great job of keeping his dialogue real and believable for the most part. Occasionally Danny and Lily’s dynamic threatens to shift from combative/competitive to conciliatory in a Lifetime movie fashion. But then Patrick recaptures the angst that keeps character tension and holds audience attention.

Hood, a Hyde Park Theatre Core Company member, does an excellent turn as the conflicted, slacker son of a father he both loathes and cannot shake his dedication to. Fisher, one of Austin’s very best actors, is highly convincing as the equally conflicted sibling trying to convince herself and her brother that her path—escape—was the better choice.

Both are wonderful physical comedians, fluid in motion, comfortable inhabiting their characters. Each gets in plenty of hilarious zingers, too. In so many shows, a romantic relationship—real, imagined, unrequited, troubled—is a given device, almost always promising an annoying happy ending or a disturbing unhappy one. Removing the possibility of romance by choosing to examine a sibling relationship, playwright Patrick has the audience wondering early on if he can sustain suspense. He certainly does.

Anyone who has had a difficult relationship with a sibling, a parent, a job, or a decision—so, like, that would be all of us— will exit bombs in your mouth with plenty of food for thought.