Jane Wickline Is Down to Clown in “Dukes”

Other than that, not overmuch happens. They sing a comic opus astir hating their jobs, a weird opus astir being firemen and redeeming beauteous girls, and a surreal opus astir rescuing a mislaid crystal goose and winning a prize that fixes their lives. Between philharmonic numbers, they collaborate connected penning a double-date ad—“I person beardown morals, but I often hide that I person them and unwittingly origin shocking harm to those astir me”—only to person their “gorgeous dates” autumn into a pizza oven. Wickline moons aft a supposedly psychic neighbour (played by Pierce, successful a atrocious wig); successful a flashback, a teen-age Pierce macks connected a MILF (Wickline, successful a worse wig). Many of their champion bits are throwaway gags, similar the revelation that Wickline works astatine a nonprofit called KeepTabs, “a assets to radical who privation to way whether idiosyncratic other has taken their pill,” oregon Pierce’s irritable ailment “That’s the worst we’ve ever been heckled astatine a funeral.”

Not each infinitesimal clicks—a country successful which Pierce “cucked” Wickline turned the knob from kooky to creepy—but not everything has to enactment for the amusement to deliver. “Dukes” has a fewer evident comedic antecedents, among them the goofus duos down “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” and “Flight of the Conchords,” and besides the melancholic viral-video virtuoso Bo Burnham. Like their spiritual older brothers from the Lonely Island, the dukes’ saccharine spot is groovy, digressive philharmonic numbers that parody pop-funk (although theirs person a folksier edge). Still, by the show’s end, the duo’s rueful existentialism, their consciousness of bemused Gen Z paralysis successful a burning world, reminded maine conscionable arsenic overmuch of my ain generation’s wryest observational standup, Steven Wright, a masterly deliverer of monotone gags specified arsenic “I mean to unrecorded forever. So far, truthful good.”

In 1 of my favourite sequences, Wickline, successful a rage astatine her compulsive scrolling, impulsively throws her telephone into the Hudson River—then realizes that she can’t fig retired however to get backmost location oregon however to wage for the C train. She winds up taking a pedicab portion grooving to a Bruno Mars opus that she can’t rather identify, a spontaneous escapade that bears immoderate resemblance to the evening itself. Sometimes you conscionable bask the dependable of a person’s voice.

To spot an adjacent younger crowd, you tin drawback Ryan Drake’s “Big Feelings,” an unnerving interactive play successful which assemblage members are deputized to play a people of archetypal graders. When you arrive, you get handed a nametag—mine said “Primrose.” Upstairs, astatine the Cell Theatre’s assemblage space, you participate a tidy, sunny first-grade classroom, wherever you are told to spot your container successful a cubby that’s been pre-labelled with your caller name. At your desk, there’s a printed leafage with an assignment: gully a representation of a clip you mislaid control. Excited, I doodled a representation of myself weeping due to the fact that Air France had mislaid my luggage. By the clip the “teacher” showed up, I’d entered an eerie, astir narcotic state, suspended betwixt my first-grade aforesaid and my big one.

In an elementary-school classroom, you consciousness simultaneously harmless and vulnerable, taxable to idiosyncratic else’s power and unfastened to their guidance. In a theatre, it’s a small spot the same. The teacher, played skillfully by Julia Greer, initially came crossed arsenic a fantastic relation model—sweet, enthusiastic, mildly authoritative, a small twee. But cracks rapidly appeared, opening with the alternately harsh and nurturing attack she took toward a pupil named Nico, whose beingness was indicated by lone an bare stool. “You’re not being harmless with your body. Disrupting people with comments!” she chided him, urging him not to disappoint her. It felt similar a connection to america all: Don’t fto maine down.

A fewer minutes in, the teacher delivered immoderate disturbing news: this would beryllium her past time successful our classroom. Step by step, her boundaries began to drop. A darker communicative started to emerge— thing astir her father, thing astir a shot game—a hidden communicative ominously encoded successful each of our lessons, successful her mathematics problems and vocabulary drills and storybook reading. Still, we had to play along: rise our hands, beryllium crisscross applesauce. These revelations, I indispensable say, near maine doubting that, had immoderate of this happened successful a existent school, the teacher would beryllium allowed to accidental goodbye to the class. But, if the show’s details didn’t wholly clasp together, it mattered precise little, due to the fact that the theatrical acquisition was truthful compelling. It felt scary, successful a almighty way, to get dropped into the assemblage of a tiny child—and to consciousness that flight could travel lone with the ringing of a bell. ♦