As soon as Jaron Hollander and Slater Penney walk on stage in The Submarine Show, looking goofy in their striped shirts, suspenders and glasses, we can see that the show is going to be fun. It’s an elaborate mime with tumbling and vocalizing. The two nimble performers fill up the stage for 75 minutes as if they were a whole company of actors.
We follow their story as they crash in their submarine, surface to the jungle, machete their way through the brush, hunt, fly and have a series other adventures. One of them even has an out-of-body experience. The audience isn’t left out. The performers coax us to put on our imaginary regulators so we can breathe underwater. When they turn into birds, they sidle through the aisles picking up our accessories with their beaks. They’re remarkably expressive; their faces register relief, satisfaction, alarm, disgust, impatience . . . And they vocalize in a hundred different ways, bleeping, screeching, howling, squeaking. At points, we nearly hear language beneath the garbled sounds. There are many moments when the story is obscure; we’re not sure just what is going on. But we can always enjoy the performance in the abstract. These are very talented performers, and The Submarine Show is well done.
