Failing the Superhuman with Pink Banana

Superhero stories are extremely difficult to get right in any medium. Countless comic books, movies and TV shows have tried to do justice to them without success. Pink Banana Theatre’s 2015 One Acts doesn’t live up to the genre’s potential in an intimate studio space.

The theatrical shorts are not entirely without merit. Sam Sherman’s Issue #11 is an agonizingly forced superhero spoof, but it’s outnumbered by shorts that all have some redeeming qualities. A piece about a support group for people with marginal super powers and another involving a conversation between super villain henchmen might seem novel to audiences not entirely familiar with the genre.

The ensemble does a valiant effort to breathe life into even the weakest material. The entire cast of Issue #11 is given an impossible task in this regard, which makes their effort all the more heroic. In Secret Origin, David Rothrock does an amazing job of turning a painfully clichéd, socially awkward comic book geek into a living, breathing character. Later on, he brilliantly nails some of the least annoying humor in the whole production as one of the title characters in Andrew Rosdail’s We Were Only Henchmen. In a sharply rendered dynamic, Samantha Martinson matches Rothrock’s wit and timing in the role of another henchman talking shop with him after hours. Martinson’s casual exasperation in the role fits the mood of the piece perfectly. Martinson also makes a notable appearance as Ms. Homeostasis in the support group at the beginning of the program. A character with the superhuman ability to tolerate minor fluctuations in temperature may not be as funny as it sounds, but Martinson’s charisma makes it substantially memorable anyway.

Pink Banana’s 2015 One Acts continue through June 13 at the Underground Collaborative. For ticket reservations, visit pinkbananamke.org.