Peter Jackson spent gazillions of dollars to tell the story of “The Hobbit.” For the new off-Broadway epic “P.S. Jones and the Frozen City,” playwright Robert Askins and director José Zayas just need spare change to summon a Glass Spider, a spirit hand, fire-breathing tigers and the title’s frosty metropolis. Not bad, huh?
Never mind that the actress playing the Glass Spider kneels on a wheeled office chair, duct-taped to a pair of helpers moving her arachno-legs, or that the hand is a puppet.
Necessity is the mother of invention, but it also fits Askins’ aesthetic. His instructions in the script include tips like “It should look dirty. It should look stole. [Let ’em] laugh at what’s sad and cry at [what’s] funny and don’t spend no money.”
That hee-haw slang is in the show, too. Askins — who scored a hit with last year’s “Hand to God,” about a Christian teen and his evil sock puppet — has set his new piece in a post-apocalyptic world peopled with steampunk hillbillies.
Chief among them is P.S. Jones (Joe Paulik), whose full first name has something to do with his job shoveling hog manure. The goofy P.S. doesn’t have the foppish good looks of his brother, Benjamin (Preston Martin), who gets called to the Frozen City by the Spider (Sofia Jean Gomez). Our hero eventually dons his “adventure britches,” and embarks on a crazy journey.
Askins easily stands out from most other young playwrights: Instead of middle-class non-problems, he offers comic-book battles with “Pow!” signs straight out of TV’s “Batman.”
The design team provide many of the show’s bright spots, making up for the juvenile humor and muddled writing — at times you’re not even sure what’s going on, nor do you really care. Still, it’s nice to see a new writer try something different.