Grace Jasmine’s new short play, The Masher, takes on serious issues in a scattergun blast of emotion and comedy. In about an hour’s worth of performance by a cast of five, the play summons up, in no particular order, low wage desperation, management rigidity and hauteur, extreme spousal abuse, difficult lesbian love, government murder, ad hoc summary execution, waste disposal, immigrant desperation, and ultimately cross-generational female bonding.
Three women apply for entry-level jobs at a waste disposal site. Cassandra (Allana Matheis) is a young mother separated from her abusive husband. Doris (Cindy Lopez), an older woman, likes the domestic life of cookie baking and crotchet. Tae (Morgan Aiken), a woke gender studies student who is working on a project concerning spousal abuse, presents as an attractive, out-there lesbian. The personal manager, Supervisor Jackson (Megan Rees), is an ill-tempered martinet. After being a scold and teaching the new employees how to do their insanely simple job, she is little to be seen. What is the job? Pushing a large button once an hour initiating a machine that mulches whatever is shoveled into its maw when the green light is on, then notating it on a clipboard. That leaves a lot of time for the women to chat and get to know each other.
Blake McCormack is listed in the program as “Three Men,” a role that he performs with boundless enthusiasm. He is, at various times, a slightly higher-level employee, a hapless immigrant destined for shredding in the machine, and a dastardly brute of a husband due for a comeuppance.
About halfway through the show, my restless brain summoned up a comparison to Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, which often blended desperation with irony and humor. The half-hour television show (actually about twenty-two minutes without commercials) relied on thinly drawn characters and exotic situations for titillating entertainment. So it is with The Masher. The characters in The Masher are representative types. As the plot thickens and the stakes increase, some players become strident. The playwright also directs and produces, which is quite a load. There are a few plays that I have seen in Los Angeles, where the playwright takes control and manages a successful performance. In one show I saw, the playwright played the lead role under the direction of an associate and was wildly successful. I also saw a show in which the playwright wrote, produced, directed and performed in a one-woman turn. It was a steaming disaster. The Masher falls somewhere in between. There is no doubting the competence of the cast, which did their best to deal with an awkward set, and a dramatic structure that calls for many short scenes.
The Masher is a viable product that is not finished. I can easily see it expanded and staged in a more commodious setting.
The Masher, produced by Loud Karma Productions, continues on June 9, 2019 @7:00pm; June 15, 2019 @ 2:00pm; June 19, 2019 @10:00pm; June 23, 2019 @8:00pm; and June 29, 2019 @4:00pm at Theatre Asylum’s Studio C–6448 Santa Monica Blvd. in Los Angeles.
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