Azuka Theatre Company presents David Jacobi's 'Ready Steady Yeti Go'

It's hard to imagine a production better than director Allison Heishman's, which captures the manic let's-put-on-a-show launch of Ready, then soars when the play's serious themes emerge.

Five friends at their makeshift clubhouse, "The Hideout" (in a woodsy set by Kevin Meehan), rehearse a show. The play's title signals their chanted cue to move forward into a new scene. Their props (by Christian Ortiz) and costumes (Ariel Wang) comically reflect the production's homemade quality.

That word

The story the kids relate is this: their small town is thrown into turmoil when someone spray-paints the most offensive racial slur imaginable in America on the home of its only black family. Their teenage daughter Carly (Kishia Nixon, phenomenal in the role) is mortified when she's sent to all her junior high's homerooms to discuss the incident with her puzzled white peers. A new hall monitor, Goon (Frank Nardi Jr.), encourages her to just skip it; mutual attraction blooms.

Their budding romance is one of Ready's many charms. Another is the relationship between brothers Goon and Gandry (Adam Howard). They're opposites: Gandry says "please" and "thank you," we learn, while Goon is "gimme" and "now."

Well-meaning but clueless adults are portrayed broadly by the teens. Alison Ormsby’s Katie plays Mrs. Apples, who leads the charge to find who sprayed the offending word, and organizes an “assembly to destroy racism forever.”

Wang costumes some adults as literal cartoons: the details on Mrs. Apples's white dress are painted in black. Church adults are presented as puppets made with socks and paper plates.

Teen sleuth "Wikipedia Jones," played by Jenson Titus Lavallee (with a spitting lisp caused by his elaborate orthodontic headgear), also seeks the perpetrator, with Ormsby as his smartass assistant. They suspect Goon, but the answer is more complicated, and Ready turns out to be much more than a whodunit.

Profound silliness

Jacobi loads on the silliness, from a proposal to cover the offending word with a mural of actor LaVar Burton in all his famous television shows (Roots, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Reading Rainbow) to a Ouija board's spirits speaking with spooky voices. The play's serious issues sneak up on us, however, as Carly, Goon, and Gandry cope with the repercussions of their community's white guilt.

Later in the 90-minute play, the group's storytelling efforts begin to crack. Ormsby plays Goon and Gandry's mother. The brothers interrupt to correct her portrayal so that the mother's theory — that Carly's family painted the word themselves for attention — comes across plausibly. Later, Carly stops Ormsby and Lavallee from representing her parents, instead playing Mom, Dad, and self in a hilarious yet painful dinner scene.

The play ends on a trippy meta-note, as they discuss what we've just seen as their latest "draft." Is what we've been watching not really their story? If there's a show outside the show, it's barely glimpsed — and it’s the play's only stumble.

Ready Steady Yeti Go flies like a rocket, blasting to a stable orbit. Its trajectory shares the story's realistic themes in a humorous yet refreshingly authentic style. The play doesn't talk down and is funny but not glib.

One can't help but think of the Parkland, Florida teens, leading the renewed effort for sensible gun legislation. Kids see issues at ground level and deal with them personally; when provoked, they can change the world.