The biggest problem facing Ryan Sickles’ A Humorless Exploration of Humanity is the youth of its creative team. Except for Julia Genovia who gets to show off her acting experience in the relatively minor role as “Selene”, none of the team seem to have the insights into the show that tend to come from experience.

Sickles writing tends to be scattered. He seems so afraid of writing a trope that every time he begins to develop an interesting story line, he abandons it for fear that someone will recognize it as part of another work. He seemingly finds it hard to accept that tropes are used because audience familiarity makes them work. He needs to trust that he can write well enough that he can make the familiar “new”. Given his background in comedy, where humor only works if the audience recognizes themselves or others, it is strange that he does not seem to believe that the same principle applies to successful playwriting.

Director Emma Lyndell’s resume seems to indicate that she should have the experience to pull Sickles away from his fears and into the world of plays an audience wants to hear. But, perhaps because of her close relationship with Sickles, she consistently fails to challenge his writing. She does do a good job with placing actors where they physically belong on stage but never gets more from a scene than she finds on paper. She also seemed to have trouble getting her actors to properly project. That, of course, is a problem for many young actors who uses amplification from the time they are in elementary school, but it certainly cannot be blamed on the space. In the ManFestival, actors from Piss and Silly William were able to fill the space with their voices and singers in Club 27, My Ghosts and Clowning made the audience wonder why they ever had to hear amplified voices. Lyndell needs to cast actors who know how to project on stage or teach them how to use their voice.

Holiday Raimond Jones as the alien, “Purple/Sutton” and Sadie Redmond as the recalcitrant daughter, “Dee”, both do solid jobs with the story they are given to work with, but the story never goes anywhere with Sickles’ start and stop writing. The reality TV show plot line never has any legs despite the efforts of Genovia, Laura Elizabeth Dennis as “Lois” and Chazz Padilla as “Texas”.

Much of the blame for Humorless’ lack of traction goes to Sickles. He introduces a fun and scary plot line in Purple which he completely fails to explore. Why does Purple look like Sutton? Why doesn’t Texas project his feelings for Sutton onto Purple? How dangerous is Purple? Why do Selene and Lois not reject an alien in their midst who may have murdered/replaced the Executive Producer of their Reality TV show?

Instead, we are treated to the real horror of a double epilog where mourning wife/mother, Lois, and daughter, Dee, reconcile, coming to terms with the unexplained suicide of their near perfect husband/father. Generally, ANY epilog is a bad idea, a double epilog does not improve its chance of success.

There is nothing here that says anyone involved in this piece should give up their theater career, but this is a play that should be put in the bottom of a drawer and hope that no one ever finds it as the entire team moves forward to better, more mature work.