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Dayanna Morales, left, and Nicole Hulett)<\/p>\nThe road to Silicon Valley implosion is paved with good intentions. In Rachel Bublitz\u2019s dark comedy\u00a0Burst, playing through July 26 from Fort Lauderdale\u2019s New City Players at Island City Stage, the intentions of its lead character, Sarah Boyd (Nicole Hulett), couldn\u2019t be nobler. Her firm, Tactix, is dedicated to discovering how to biodegrade plastic by chemically altering its polymers, thereby solving a \u201cglobal crisis,\u201d according to the World Resources Institute, one that generates 353 million metric tons of waste per year. So what if the science being conducted through her venture capital-funded headquarters in Mountain View isn\u2019t quite\u2014OK, isn\u2019t even close to being\u2014scalable yet? That\u2019s what the next round of funding is for. Fake it til you make it, right?<\/p>\n
Boyd\u2019s presence in the show precedes her first appearance, as we take in Aubrey Rodriguez\u2019s set design for Boyd\u2019s office, where the action takes place over one monumental night. Before the play opens, our eyes are drawn to a clever mocked-up\u00a0Forbes\u00a0cover radiating the penetrating gaze of Hulett, as Boyd. It reminded me very much of the actual\u00a0Forbes\u00a0cover depicting Theranos CEO and convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes holding a test vial of blood between her thumb and forefinger. This association, I soon found out, was intentional: The showbill\u2019s notes from director Elizabeth Price are simply six quotes from Elizabeth Holmes, followed by the ominous phrase \u201cThe bubble is beautiful, until it bursts.\u201d<\/p>\n
We meet Sarah Boyd in a harried state, which is to say it\u2019s just another Tuesday for this high-powered CEO. Although perhaps not\u00a0just\u00a0another day at the office, because over the course of the show, the mercurial founder will confront two specific but overlapping threats.<\/p>\n
In the first, her company is to begin a trial of its own making the next morning, after it initiated a civil lawsuit against Boyd\u2019s former professor and mentor at U.C. Berkeley, who has publicly stated that she doesn\u2019t believe Tactix has the data to support its grandiose claims about eliminating 20 percent of the world\u2019s plastics. Chemist Jennifer Weaver (Mary Gundlach), Tactix\u2019 earnest co-founder and chief technical officer, whom Boyd met in college 20 years ago, is set to appear in court and lie about the false promises Boyd has made to her funders, and she\u2019s having second thoughts about putting her reputation on the line. About half of the interactions in\u00a0Burst\u00a0center on this dilemma.<\/p>\n
Dayanna Morales, left, and Nicole Hulett)<\/p>\n
The other, juicier half, in terms of theatrical momentum, involves the appearance of a journalist, Alexis Lyons (Dayana Morales), for a late-night interview for an investigative feature into Boyd and Tactix. As Lyons\u2019 demeanor, initially played by Morales as a bubbly fangirl enamored by her proximity to a Bay Area powerhouse, gradually gives way to the bulldog reporter in disguise, Boyd\u2019s stage-managed persona finally begins to crack under the pressure. It\u2019s a marvelously paced tet-a-tet, superbly acted and directed.<\/p>\n
That said, Bublitz\u2019s script can feel a little too schematic. Even the appearance of Lyons, though technically an unexpected story element, is telegraphed; when Boyd is informed that a female journalist is coming to her office instead of the chummy male reporter to whom she usually confides, she flies into a sexist tirade that insults the intelligence of all women writers\u2014thereby teeing us up to expect the exact opposite, which is what we receive. I wanted to be surprised by\u00a0Burst\u00a0far more than I was.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, Sarah Boyd is written as an overly familiar Silicon Valley archetype\u2014a heartless sociopath with a lust for growth and power who will bulldoze anyone who stands in her way. Line after line underlines her staggering egotism: \u201cI am changing the world.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m nothing if not vastly impressive.\u201d She compares her work, even in its fraudulence, to the inventions of the wheel and fire. I\u2019m not sure if even the freaks who run some of our biggest tech companies talk this way, or if this is just how TV tech villains communicate.<\/p>\n
But by God if Hulett doesn\u2019t sell each and every line. The Aussie-born actress is magnetic, from her opening scene\u2014in which she practices a hyper-polished version of her funding pitch\u2014to the play\u2019s close, a revisit of the same speech but in a transformed context. Playing Boyd with a manic, intimidating energy, she can be funny and menacing, often in the same breath. Inserting a crazed giggle to defuse tense moments, she can summon tantrums with the fist-slamming impatience of a tinpot dictator but just as easily turn on the charm and false modesty. It\u2019s scary how accurate this performance feels.<\/p>\n
From a technical standpoint, New City Players\u2019 team excels in the wellness-coded language and style of firms like Tactix, from Boyd\u2019s sweater vest with its company logo resembling a leaf (kudos to Costume Designer Casey Sacco) to the tastefully arranged coffee table books in the office, with titles like\u00a0Little Joys\u00a0and\u00a0Stillness\u2014nouns unknown to the perpetual motion machine that is Sarah Boyd.<\/p>\n
The most impressive touch is the wall of recyclables at the back of the stage\u2014thousands and thousands of plastic containers filling up a phalanx of storage units, bottom to top. It\u2019s unclear if this museum-ready display is actually an element of Boyd\u2019s office or it\u2019s a symbolic suggestion of sorts from Scenic Designer Rodriguez, but either way, it feels fitting. There they are, the targets of our culture of convenience, piling up and bearing down, mocking the action below in all of their eternal stubbornness. Megalomaniacal CEOs may come and go, but the plastic is here to stay.<\/p>\n
Burst\u00a0runs through July 26 at New City Players at Island City Stage, 2304 N. Dixie Highway, Wilton Manors. Tickets cost $40. Call 954\/376-6114 or visit newcityplayers.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n