In Act Two, when the play veers onto the terrain of gory horror, there’s a detectable whiff of desperation.
In his scabrous “Hand to God” — a play about a Texas teenager possessed by a satanic sock puppet, presented in 2017 by Boston’s SpeakEasy Stage Company — Askins adeptly balanced the funny and horrific bits.
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With “The Squirrels,” though, it feels as if the playwright is just throwing stuff at the wall in hopes that some of it might stick. Not much does, although there is one standout performance.
Double performance, actually. Thain Bertin plays an amusingly bombastic (human) scientist who frames the squirrelly saga, while also portraying a devious gray squirrel named Sciuridae. (The cast is attired in squirrel suits designed by Susan Paino. Scenic designer Joseph Lark-Riley, who also handles the sound design, has created a woodsy, autumn-brown setting.)
Bertin’s Sciuridae comes across as a combination of Iago, from “Othello,” and Kieran Culkin’s Roman Roy, from HBO’s “Succession.” Sciuridae is all oleaginous insinuation and passive-aggression — and, eventually, not-at-all-passive aggression.
The target of Sciuridae’s manipulation and attempted power grab is Sciurus, the irascible patriarch of the gray squirrels, played by Dev Luthra. Sciurus refuses to acknowledge the clear signs of cognitive slippage (one thinks inevitably of Joe Biden).
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Sciurus is a squirrel version of the one-percenters who believe they’re entitled to more than the rest of us in the 99 percent. In fairness, though, he has been methodical in the collection of nuts.
His longtime romantic partner is the fiercely loyal Mammalia (Cara Clough). His biological daughter is Chordata (played at Sunday’s performance by Audrey Johnson, who will alternate with Parker Jennings in the role), and his adopted daughter is Rodentia (Sophia Koevary), a young fox squirrel Sciurus saved, and then raised as his own.
Rodentia is in love with Carolinensis (Mateo Bailey), a forceful fox squirrel. It is Carolinensis who sets events in motion by asking Sciurus to share nuts with the fox squirrels, saying “you have more nuts than any other squirrel in these trees and things are very bad in the branches… You have nuts enough to last ten winters. You have more food than you could ever eat.”
But Sciurus is unmoved, declaring that he will not succumb to the pressure from “freeloaders.”
Into this stalemate between the Have-Nots and the Have-Nuts comes the opportunistic Sciuridae, seeing and then seizing his chance to divide and conquer.
Describing the fox squirrels, he says to Sciurus: “Their litters are huge. They spend all day sucking sap and asking for handouts. They don’t know how our tree works and they don’t want to know. They don’t have the basic respect for other squirrels.” An obvious reflection of the hostility directed today at the poor and/or immigrants, it’s one of too many on-the-nose allusions in “The Squirrels.”
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“The Squirrels” notwithstanding, Apollinaire’s track record is strong. In Danielle Fauteux Jacques, Apollinaire has what every theater company needs, especially the smaller ones: An artistic director with a vision of what she wants her theater to be, fortified by the ability to achieve, show by show, the fulfillment of that vision.
Under her leadership, Apollinaire has specialized in outside-the-box works that can achieve maximum impact in the small performance space at Theatre Works.
I don’t expect to ever see an “Uncle Vanya” better than the one Apollinaire presented in 2012. The company’s production of Clare Barron’s “Dance Nation” was No. 1 on my Top 10 list in 2023. And Apollinaire’s astonishing 2019 production of David Greig’s “The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart” starring Becca A. Lewis and Reeves — wearing his other hat as an indispensable actor in the company — occupies a permanent place in my memory. “The Squirrels” will not.
THE SQUIRRELS
Play by Robert Askins. Directed by Brooks Reeves. Presented by Apollinaire Theatre Company. At Chelsea Theatre Works, Chelsea. Through May 18. Tickets $25-$65. 617-887-2336, www.apollinairetheatre.com.
This post has been updated to correct the spelling of Thain Bertin’s name.
Don Aucoin can be reached at donald.aucoin@globe.com. Follow him @GlobeAucoin.
