Tiny Dynamite's A Play, a Pie, and a Pint presents Chris Davis's 'Bortle 8'

Dinner theater earned a reputation for a lethal combination of bad food and bad art back in its heyday, but I think the idea that we can sit at tables instead of in rows, and eat and drink during a performance, actually works. Provide decent food and a good show, and the result defies the stereotype. Tiny Dynamite based their approach to dinner theater on a Scottish company’s 2004 idea for lunchtime shows. They have now been producing PPP for six seasons, so they know it works. I love it. One acts are seldom produced outside the Fringe, and the vibe is always warm and welcoming.

Holiday treats

For local playwright and performer Chris Davis’s Bortle 8, an hour-long one-man show, mulled wine and hot cider are options along with the usual beer and soda, and the pizza has been replaced by mince pie from Passyunk Avenue’s Stargazy. As in other venues they’ve used, such as the now-gone Red Room at Society Hill Playhouse, seating is a combination of cabaret tables and theater seats at The Drake’s small Louis Bluver space, a nice fit for a no-set show that was originally performed on urban rooftops.

Davis plays a manic storyteller version of himself, not unlike the character who enacts an entire movie plot in his Fringe hit One-Man Apocalypse Now. He spends the first half of this semi-improvised show relating to the audience, ad-libbing references to current events like a desperate stand-up comedian (“How about them Russians?”), hectoring us for some audience participation, and overstating two points: we’re all in this room together, and we all have imaginations.

At times, Bortle 8 feels like a play for children, and not in a good way. That first half meanders and condescends. “I’m judging you just as you’re judging me.” Really, don’t we know that? “I can make up whatever I want” seems pretty basic too. I wanted to pat him on the head and shove him outside until his naptime.

The play emerges

The bortle, we eventually learn, is a measure of light defined by John Bortle, a real-life amateur astronomer, who becomes a character in the tale. That measure, the “Bortle scale,” is used to clarify levels of light in the night sky, from the overwhelming wash of ambient city light that hides the stars to “true darkness,” which Davis strives to find. Davis gets the details wrong at first, but it’s explained correctly later.

Director Mary Tuomanen’s production is aided by Masha Tsimring’s delicate lighting, which suggests all the Bortle levels, and Adriano Shaplin’s atmospheric sound, which uses snippets of music and other effects with precision much as they’re used on NPR shows such as This American Life. Nicholas Hussong’s projections resemble the viewscreen images from the starship Enterprise as it explores space at warp speed.

Davis builds from his tedious beginning to a psychological adventure that becomes very personal, though its conclusion underscores the pushy irrelevance of the show’s first half. The terra incognita Davis seeks at the beginning is internal, and that’s the place we dare not illuminate until we’re forced to do so.

Bortle 8 doesn’t quite match its holiday refreshments, but it grows into an intriguing, well-paced ride delivered by a bold performer, and served with nice treats.