Recently, I attended the opening performance of “MAROONED! a spit & vigor play series” at spit & vigor’s home base in the handsomely renovated Gowanus Creative Studios.

Located in an industrial zone of warehouses, factories, and re-purposed spaces, GCS provides a dynamic environment in Brooklyn where artists of various disciplines house their ateliers and share their work.

The core of the spit & vigor presentation was a selection of four short plays whose common thread was location: a desert island.

The plays themselves were linked by spoken introductions and sea shanties, performed live.

And yes, there were swordfights, treasure chests, ghosts, campfires, leather boots galore and, of course, the obligatory “Harhar, har dee harhar!!” pirates, with even a vodka-based faux “rum” drink offered to the audience, courtesy of hip distillery Misguided Spirits, a spit & vigor corporate sponsor.

All very cozy, and tied with a bow so neatly, in fact, that the evening’s antics might easily have dribbled into a quagmire of self-satisfied kitsch.

Fortunately for all, spit & vigor has assembled a dynamic company of actors who, with few exceptions, possess shared attributes of skill, taste, literacy, and commitment to the craft of their art.

The plays selected are youthful, perhaps even student, works, and vary widely in merit, but each nonetheless provides the actors with act-able situations and characters that withstand sculpting.

The company has supplied a competent director for each play, but it is the individual actors who make both the most valuable contribution and the strongest impression.

Leading from strength, the evening launched with THE WRECK OF THE QUEEN THOMASINA by Connor Nelis Johnson, produced by Footpath Theatre Company, presented by spit & vigor.

A romantic tone poem of a play, THOMASINA was anchored by finely rendered characterizations from both Hal Lind (in his New York debut) and Connor Nelis Johnson (the play’s author).

These are appealing young actors who are thoroughly and very well trained, whose ready facility of execution and attention to detail gave them the ability not only to elevate the flaws in the play itself but also to mediate the often obtrusive, self-important, staging.

Crash override?

Well done, Gentlemen!

The play itself has stretches of real beauty alongside some rough patches and awkward hairpin turns.

It would be worthwhile to address this script with the assistance of the objective eye of a rigorous script doctor because, in this writer’s opinion, THE WRECK OF THE QUEEN THOMASINA deserves a future.

Next up was MAROONED, a slender piece by spit & vigor resident playwright, actor, director, and MAROONED! project originator, Sara Fellini.

An intermezzo in form and weight, with a tip of the hat to Wilkie Collins, Baron Corvo, and Edgar Allan Poe, MAROONED is quite charming when treated with the light touch which it – to a fair extent - received.

A performance highlight of MAROONED was the enigmatic presence of lovely Caitlin Dulligan-Bates as the Ghost Woman, who struck just the right note, and established the visual and dramatic reference points for the rest of the play.

The spirits of David Storey, Samuel Beckett, and Tom Stoppard may have been breathing down Peter Oliver’s neck while he was writing JAMAICA.

A surreal romp relying heavily on the performers’ strict control of language and razor sharp acting style to bring the words off the page, the play’s intermittent strengths were exploited to the max by a trio of fine performances.

Versatile Ryan Desaulniers, in the pivotal role of Vin, blithely tossed off the play’s challenging verbiage with agility, skill, and imagination; a level of panache that makes one want to see him in Sheridan, Shaw, Wilde, and yes, Stoppard.

Alexander Zuccaro excelled as the surly, passive-aggressive tourist, his characterization nicely detailing a handsome, obnoxious, geek whose shirt is too tailored and whose designer eyewear signals dollars spent.

An exceptionally fluid actress, Stephanie Bok was a sheer delight as Zuccaro’s wide-eyed, endearingly empty-headed wife.

If Lee Patrick had married Betty White...

As for the lugubrious tread of the turtle race at the play’s core, do keep in mind that everything is relative: rural Germany is presently the scene of a six-century-long performance, already underway, of an organ composition by John Cage.

The fourth offering was a finely honed theatre miniature.

SILVER BLOOD (S) by Z. Quinn Reynolds is a nimble tour-de-force of a playlet which virtuosically ricochets like a pinball game, careening madly from Victorian melodrama to Carol Burnett-style sketch comedy and back again.

Sara Fellini’s contemporary urban sarcasm gave a strong and comical silhouette to her character, and altogether SILVER BLOOD (S) was a welcome high-energy closing parenthesis for the evening.

In the 1960’s and ‘70’s, before non-profit theatre became big business, New York City and the outer boroughs were dotted with many small, ephemeral, theatrical and musical events.

Most of the producing groups were unincorporated, and many were not what would be called professional today, but professionalism was not the goal: creating Art was.

The common factors of these shows were passion, boldness, sometimes politics and protest, desire to excel, and willingness to fail.

There is more than a trace of this vibe at spit & vigor, and I found it both refreshing and uplifting.

The growing reputation of spit & vigor is founded on inventiveness and skillful execution of surprising, innovative, concept-driven work.

The MAROONED! play series, however, keeps us seated in our collective comfort zone.

All design elements are hardwired to the most conservative American naturalistic tradition.

The plays, their stagings, even the series concept, are wedged securely within established academic norms: proper, well-manicured, contained, and genteel.

There was sometimes a fragrance of grad school black box project about it...

BUT

The MAROONED! play series offers something important that is neither edgy nor intellectually challenging: HEART.

The series is clearly an act of love, a tribute to a cherished childhood theme.

Who among us has not fantasized about what life would be like, stranded on a desert island with swordfights, treasure chests, ghosts, campfires, leather boots galore and, of course, the obligatory “Harhar, har dee harhar” pirates?

Simply put, the MAROONED! play series is an affectionate tribute; wish fulfillment in the form of a spirited evening of light entertainment.

It asks nothing of the audience but an open heart and a willingness to imagine.

I hope spit & vigor continues strong, and that it finds additional support as it goes on its artistic way.

I also hope it is smart enough to stay small if and when its financial ship comes in.

The easily navigated website https://www.spitnvigor.com contains performance calendar, box office reservations, a company archive, a mechanism for contributions and how to get and stay involved.

The MAROONED! play series performances run, in rotating rep, nightly through the 21st.

Highly recommended!