Review: Rivendell's "Pivot" takes audiences on a darkly funny, 100-minute thrill ride

I’m a fan of dark comedies. Especially when they deliver an unexpected twist.

In the world premiere play “Pivot” at Rivendell Theatre, penned by Jeff Award-winning playwright Alex Lubischer and directed by Rivendell ensemble member Hallie Gordon, that twist comes in the first scene.

The setup feels like the opener in a rom-com. We meet Levi ( David Stobbe), who has fallen head-over-heels for Kara (Ashley Neal) after only knowing her for about a year. Levi is explaining this love to his best friend Doug (Glenn Obrero), who is about to be the best man at Levi’s upcoming wedding.

There’s a spoiler here: In the blink of an eye, we jump from a love-struck Levi singing a cheesy remix of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” — with revamped lyrics about how he met Kara — to Levi’s decapitation. A motor explodes on an irrigation pivot, and in the first 10 minutes, we pivot from a new love rom-com to a dark comedy about death.

That’s the tone of this two-act, 100-minute thrill ride. Everything happens so fast. All of the bones for a fantastic play are here, but the pacing doesn’t leave enough room for us to adequately connect to the characters.

At its best, the play soars into near absurd scenes leaving me wondering, How did we get here? When Kara takes the mic at Levi’s wake, she is wearing her wedding dress. She starts her speech by describing her sex life with the recently deceased in front of his entire family, earning a roar of laughter, or shock, that ripples through the audience.

Conversely, there are scenes that don’t feel fully baked. Kara explains to the priest — who was once hired for the wedding and is now running the funeral procession — that she prayed for her father to die as a child. She even witnessed his death and didn’t intervene. But we never learn why she hated her father. Perhaps that isn't important. But it feels like a missed opportunity to further explore this character and solidify her desperate attempts to be liked by Levi’s father, George.

Keith Kupferer, who plays George, is a superb actor. At times, he felt underutilized in this production. We are told, in passing, that his relationship with his son wasn’t the best. That could have been more fleshed out. As the old-school, emotionally repressed father figure, he doesn’t really speak full thoughts in the first act. By Act Two, he has a sudden burst of emotion and it is a reminder of what he is actually capable. I wonder why we had to wait so late in the production to get this.

Kupferer and Neal handle their roles deftly. Their relationship becomes central to the play, as a father who has missed having a relationship with his son and a young woman without a father. They eventually find solace in each other, but the duo needs more time to realize their own relationship. Without building up these plot lines, the payoff in the end feels unearned.

There are juicy moments throughout. Kara’s refusal to allow an entire town to grieve is funny, especially with her adamant choice to make Levi’s funeral a hybrid wedding. This opens the door for plenty of hijinks, which the production delivers.

Obrero is a delight as Doug. The explosion that killed Levi leaves Doug with an eye patch and a cast. At the bachelor party — Kara insists on going through with the bachelor party even though the groom is dead — Doug gets shot in the other eye with a paintball gun. He performs the rest of the show comically blinded with each eye bandaged from injury.

I appreciate when playwrights take a swing. Lubischer leans into the absurdity of hosting a wedding-funeral hybrid and overall it works.

But the production would benefit from giving more space to understanding George and Kara and letting their relationship blossom naturally. Outside of the laughs, the play also wants to talk about grief and letting go. If the show slows down, and allows those ideas to percolate, the audience will leave more fulfilled, and the final scene will be much more satisfying.