Azuka Theatre presents Douglas Williams's world premiere 'Shitheads'

Work family

Shitheads takes place in a dingy Chelsea bicycle shop, realistically rendered by scenic designer Apollo Mark Weaver with props by Avista Custom Theatrical, LLC, who too seldom receive deserved praise. J. Dominic Chacon’s lighting shows the passage of seasons and makes the shop almost magical.

Akeem Davis plays Alex, who’s “got the keys” – meaning he’s the manager for owner Mike, known as “the asshole,” who never appears. Mike’s hired a new guy, Brandon (Harry Watermeier), who has no experience with bikes but was desperate for a job and told a good story about attending the Tour de France. Even worse: “I don’t technically have a bike,” he admits. Alex decrees, “You don’t punch in unless you ride to work.”

Veteran mechanic Izzy (Charlotte Northeast), longtime customer and bike messenger Spider (David Pica), and Alex haze the new guy, but eventually accept him. Shitheads is more than a coming-of-age story about a bicycle neophyte learning the trade, however, and Williams rightly resists making Brandon’s literary aspirations the play’s center. It’s much more about how work relationships function in our lives: how co-workers become a family whose foundation is dependent on a business surviving, and how that family can fracture when its foundation is threatened.

Shop talk

Williams’s taut script brims with technical, high-context dialogue. While we’re helped to understand the shop’s inner workings because Brandon is new, there’s no sense of the playwright shoveling exposition into the script to make it easy. We’re immersed in this tiny world – tossed into its deep end – and absorb its arcane tribal rules on the fly as the cast brings them to life. Particularly revealing is the pride Alex and Izzy feel in not being like their rivals, the shiny corporate store across the street. “Assholes,” Alex says. “they tuck their shirts in over there.” Izzy concurs: “Warby Parker motherfuckers.” Brandon develops a bike-shop swagger that’s both humorous and touching, and finally becomes an “official shithead.”

What emerges so winningly in Kevin Glaccum’s perfectly modulated production and the ensemble’s committed performances is their passion for bikes: riding them (“The city is different on a bike,” Alex says, with religious conviction), fixing them, even selling them. The plot hinges on an expensive new bike Izzy refuses to sell unless the buyer has not only the money but the proper respect and care for a bike of its quality. Events build to a climax that isn’t fully shown or explained but which resonates powerfully.

It’s one of the most assured and complete premieres of a play I’ve ever seen, with no sense that the script needs more work. Shitheads shows that development really succeeds when a writer’s work is nurtured over time by dedicated, talented artists. Williams is one of Azuka’s resident playwrights and also developed Shitheads with PlayPenn and the Foundry, two local organizations (now merged) that develop new plays. It could, and should, find great success in regional theaters.