Philly Fringe 2024: Lightning Rod Special presents Lee Minora and Scott R. Sheppard’s Nosejob

Co-conceived by Lee Minora and Scott R. Sheppard, this ambitious but uneven dark comedy uses a juvenile prank to embody the ways in which men still claim ownership and control over women’s bodies, as well as the limited means that women have to fight back. At an unnamed, religiously affiliated university, a group of boys start a trend called “Bury”: with little warning and no consent, they shove their faces into their female classmates’ chests.

Gentlemen and the status quo

Devon (Minora), the play’s de facto narrator, leads the audience through the repercussions and reverberations of this violating act. A pair of comically woke football coaches (played by Sheppard and Matteo Scammell, who also co-developed the piece) implore their athletes to be gentlemen—while tacitly suggesting the status quo will remain. When Devon’s close friends Sam (Ciera Gardner) and Laura (Alice Yorke) attempt to take revenge into their own hands, calamity and overt violence befall them.

Amy (Leigha Kato), another member of Devon’s cohort, seems to meet a more psychologically scarring fate. Warm and vivacious in the play’s opening scene, a kegger that quickly goes south, she disappears from the narrative, only to return as a shell of her former self. Her presence suggests that some acts of harm cannot be easily overcome.

Disarming and vexing

As with Underground Railroad Game and The Appointment, which addressed volatile subjects of race and abortion with bravado and tongue-in-cheek humor, the Lightning Rod Special brand of simultaneously disarming and vexing a viewer remains intact. Yet while those previous works took on their topics with laser focus, Nosejob attempts to jam too many thematic and intellectual threads into one package. The result hangs together loosely, with certain elements taking up too much space while others go unexplored.

The charged relationship between Minora’s Devon, a student trainer on the school’s football team, and Scammell’s wily assistant coach brings the greatest spark to the drama. Their scenes together explore the dynamics of power and consent in a diverting yet uncomfortable way. The interactions between Minora, Gardner, and Yorke also show how young women can feel empowered and powerless in the same moment.

Integration needed

Yet several diversions into fantasy sequences—which feature Sheppard and Scammell as Vikings and Minora, Gardner, and Yorke as nuns—interrupt the play’s momentum, as do scenes where some cast members play bumbling college deans. And while Kato is electric in a series of audience-addressed monologues, Amy’s purpose within the narrative remains too vague. The talented director Nell Bang-Jensen has not figured out a way to fully integrate these discursive aspects in a way that feels both coherent and engaging.

The production itself features several eye-catching elements, including an immersive set by You-Shin Chen, which extends into the lobby with dingy couches and red Solo cups that put the audience in the center of a rowdy frat party. The stark blackouts of Mike Inwood’s lighting design and the eerie resonance of Kathy Ruvuna’s soundscape disarm in appropriately uncomfortable ways. The acting ensemble is uniformly strong, although Minora’s delivery occasionally flattens out when speaking in direct address.

The throughline from St. Aebbe to Devon shows that women have imperfect means of protecting themselves, many of which may bring about more harm than good. Nosejob is similarly imperfect—a play with an important message but an overwrought execution.

Know before you go: Nosejob contains partial nudity and scenes of simulated sex, as well as explicit and implied references to sexual assault, which may be disturbing to some viewers.