“Seven Assassins Walk Into a Bar,” the title of the newest production by Houston’s Main Street Theater, sounds an attempt at a fresh setup for a tired joke. To some degree, it is. But tired jokes hang around for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that they help us deal with uncomfortable feelings and opinions in a comfortable way. That’s the case with this play.
Written and directed by Dain Geist, “Seven Assassins” has six professional killers show up at a rented saloon to hold a wake for one of their guild: Bartleby whose coffin looms discretely behind the serving bar. Like any career professionals, they start by talking “shop,” but as their full numbers arrive, the talk dives deeper. From intros and James Bond jokes they slide into the motivations and morality of their jobs, and before you can pull a trigger these professional killers’ bottled up emotions flow out like gin through a pour spout. Yet for all their justifications and insistence on their differences, they are their jobs, and they are targeting ways to live with what they do. It’s funny; it’s haunting. But it’s not that different from a lot of professional confabs. Indeed, the image of a meeting of Donald Trump’s DOGE crew kept popping into my head.
But this is not a political play; it’s more a social x-ray. For it to work as a production, it needs strong performances from the cast. Two stand out. Christianne Mays as the oldest of the assassins, Taft, uses a mellow English accent to greet the others as they arrive and reflect on her long and recently uneven career. And she turns icy at the drop of a hammer—a professional grandmother you probably don’t want to babysit your kids. At the other end of the age spectrum, Kara Greenberg as Rabbit brings a feminist critique to this “boy’s club” along with a strong sense of being stepped over far too often and at the peril of the stepper. Showing only slightly less depth, Brad Goertz’s “Vane,” a gay debonair hitman, and his opposite, “Montana” (Seth Carter Ramsey) who passes himself off as a red-neck truck driver, turn stereotypes into relatable—to a degree—humans.
Wisely, Geist’s direction keeps the play’s 90-minute moving—wise because it has a short road for plot development. A deadly ending, even one as clever as this play’s, is inherent in the premise. And I think the audience is ultimately fine with that. These are true killers, not romanticized spies. No return announcements are wanted in the credits. After all, as they keep reminding themselves and the audience, their work is messy with blood and bone fragments; their violence too easily booms and blooms into mayhem for the guilty and the innocent.
Yet, as what I think is Mr. Giest’s first full-length play, “Seven Assassins” creates a thirst to see him write and stage more. If this play is a predictor, he has the talent to make audiences run up a hefty tab at his tap.
“Seven Assassins Walk Into a Bar” in at Houston’s Main Street Theater through March 2.
Robert Donahoo is a professor at Sam Houston State University and writes theater reviews for The Courier.
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