Philly Fringe 2016 review: Iron Age Theatre's 'A Runaway, a Soldier and a Snowball Fight'

And then there's Leah Lawler's A Runaway, a Soldier, and a Snowball Fight.

Modern phrasing from colonial characters

While the play, set in 1770 Boston, includes historical references and director John Doyle's always-voluminous program includes a two-page glossary of period slang, Lawler's dialogue rings awkwardly contemporary. "Hello?" a newsboy, played by Ned Pryce, says sarcastically. "Get me some new material!"

He and central character Crispus Attucks, played by likeable JaRon Battle, read the newspaper aloud to provide exposition. Crispus is a wanted mulatto runaway slave, and avoids capture in large part because the British soldier who befriends him is a lonely dullard. In fact, he's as "dull as a box of rocks," one of many contemporary-sounding phrases that hamper the talky script: "crisps" (British for potato chips, not invented yet), "wuss," "big time," "kiss and tell," "it's a free country," "endgame," "blitzed"...I eventually stopped writing them down.

Could they have been uttered in 1770? Sure, why not, none of us were there. But the number of contemporary-sounding words and phrases uttered in contemporary-sounding ways leaves one wondering if the anachronisms are purposeful. Deliberate ambiguity, perhaps? If so, it's too subtle to make any point.

Plot matters

More confounding, however, is what Lawler wants this play to be, beyond its meandering humor. Most of its 10 scenes aspire to frenetic comedy (though Pryce confuses that with loudness, overwhelming Fergie's Pub's cozy upstairs bar), but funniness without story soon stalls. Crispus hangs around with people, all played by Pryce: Fergus, keeper of the Green Dragon Tavern; Sam Adams, an aspiring brewer of beer; plus the soldier and newsboy. They chat about whaling, names, beer, poetry, and, briefly, the Boston Tea Party.

Finally, the event for which history remembers Crispus Attucks occurs, a shock not set up or explored by Lawler's play. Those who recall, or read the program beforehand, will still be surprised by its suddenness, after which the play immediately ends. Those who've forgotten high school American history or don't read programs might not even be sure what happened.

Either way, what's achieved by A Runaway, a Soldier, and a Snowball Fight defies understanding. Does the play make a point about pointlessness, or about how random events can later achieve importance? Could this even be a play about contemporary violence against black Americans as those wonderful yet frustrating program notes suggest?

Or am I trying too hard because I want it to be something, and not nothing, which is what it felt like?