It’s hard out here for a chimp. The title character of the new off-Broadway show “Trevor” is a primate desperately trying to revive his acting career. His claim to fame: He once shot a show and commercial with Morgan Fairchild.
“You’d think the phone would be ringing off the hook,” the embittered Trevor (Steven Boyer) says after a fruitless effort to land a Dunkin’ Donuts spot. “I mean, I have a proven track record.”
In this dark comedy by Nick Jones (LCT3’s excellent period piece “The Coward”), we’re privy to Trevor’s thoughts, but humans don’t understand him, and he doesn’t understand them. He can recognize a few words, but mostly he communicates with his harried “mom,” Sandra (Colleen Werthmann), through very basic sign language — which isn’t enough to prevent misunderstandings.
Sandra got Trevor when he was a baby, a gift from her late husband. But now the baby’s all grown up, and volatile. Neighbor Ashley (Amy Staats) worries that Trevor could be dangerous. Sandra, who treats the chimp as if he were family, can’t even imagine life without him — and won’ t lock him in his cage.
“I think he may have attention deficit disorder,” she tells Ashley, as if this made everything OK.
Clad in a yellow shirt and denim overalls, the brilliant Boyer (who played a teen with a profanity-spewing puppet in “Hand to God”) gives Trevor a mix of endearing goofiness and pent-up frustration that can quickly bloom into full-on rage.
Under Moritz von Stuelpnagel’s restrained direction, he moves across the stage with liquid grace, flashing gummy grins both funny and frightening: It’s clear to us that Sandra can’t control Trevor anymore.
Jones hilariously exploits the gap between our hero’s obsessive hunger for showbiz and the fact that, well, he’s an ape. In inspired fantasy sequences, Trevor confides in a fellow thespian primate, the dapper Oliver (Nathaniel Kent), and relives his days co-starring with Fairchild (Geneva Carr).
“We really hit it off,” he recalls. “She’s one of the few actresses I feel comfortable calling a peer.”
Under its zany exterior, though, the play touches on serious topics: the trauma of has-been actors trying to get back into the game, and what happens when people anthropomorphize animals.
All that plus a chimp playing a toy guitar, then fighting a human for the remote control? Few shows cover as many bases.