Review: Impact Theatre uncorks inspired comedic lunacy with ‘Disassembly’

Steve Yockey’s “Disassembly,” which premiered during the weekend at Berkeley’s Impact Theatre, is a wickedly funny, almost subversive little comedy of bad manners.

With the simple ambition of just being entertaining and delighting, the short comedy, more of a slice of life, seems to have raided some sort of home for wacky and demented supporting characters and thrust them together in the small apartment of twins Evan (Nick Trengove) and Ellen (Kathryn Zdan).

But the story pauses first to present a stylized version of an Aesop’s fable about the fox and the crow (the former uses a bit of false flattery to steal food from the latter). This immediately sets a red “Relevance Ahead” light flashing. But it turns out to be a false alarm that, like just about everything else here, is something to be slyly mocked.

So after the bird has flown and the fox has left in whatever way foxes depart, we are back in the apartment where Ellen is in a state of high anxiety. Her fairly good pal Tessa (Dina Percia) and Tessa’s chum with no benefits, Stanley (Seth Thygesen), turn up to help her deal with the disaster at hand: Her brother has been stabbed in the shoulder for no apparent reason while jogging.

Poor Ellen is in a tizzy, which seems to be the way most of her life is spent. Evan’s intended, Diane (Marissa Keltie), who makes her first entrance from Evan’s bedroom toting a plastic bag filled with bloody bandages, is simply trying to cope with this human zoo to which she has become engaged.

Meanwhile, Ellen’s wannabe boyfriend, Jerome (Tim Redmond), shows up in what appears to be a perpetual state of maniacal confusion, and a neighbor and former one-night stand of Evan’s, Mirabelle (Andrea Snow), keeps popping in with a variety of paranoid fantasies.

It appears to be, at first blush, seven characters in search of a good meltdown, but from the start, Yockey’s play has an infectiously goofy charm that sucks you in. His style and pace have been influenced by “Saturday Night Live” sketches (the good ones) and the ethos of modern sitcoms. But the assembly here is all his own, and he has created a play with a healthy cynicism but never a self-conscious wink or nod.

Desdemona Chiang’s seamless direction gives physical form to Yockey’s style in a fast-paced presentation in which the actors seem unaware that what’s enveloping them is pure zaniness. And the result is hilarious.

Finally, the actors’ sensibilities, timing and comedy style are in complete sync with Yockey’s humor.

The entire piece is aimed at Impact Theatre’s core audience group, bright under-30s who thrive on theater that takes place in a pizza parlor that allows for snacking and sipping beer. While under-30s are the target, the humor in “Disassembly” resonates with almost any age.