Two men get stuck in the middle of nowhere, en route to meet up with some “pretty ladies” who they hope will wash the gay right out of them. Shoulder, one of Flashpoint’s Fringe Festival offerings, tries to create sympathy for a couple of self-loathing gay men, but ultimately creates just the opposite. This is no Angels in America, a story of men struggling to make sense of their place in a society plagued by political oppression. Though there is one vague mention that the play might take place in the early 1980’s (their broken-down 1972 Chevy Nova), there is no other social context to the story, so it’s difficult to understand the motivations of these characters, especially sitting here in relatively Gay and Proud Washington, D.C.

Rob Heinly is successful at putting emotion into his character, Rafe, especially considering he spends the whole play seated on the ground after having been inexplicably chained to a tire and abandoned by a policeman who caught the two men “changing a flat tire” in the middle of the woods at three in the morning. Of course, most of this “emotion” is loud, profane vitriol directed at either Mitchell (Christopher C. Holbert) or the constantly screeching cicadas in the background. Holbert is a bit awkward, and seems to read his lines from unseen cue cards like an SNL Host. Randy Tusing is believable as a crazy swamp man, but often spoke what seemed to be important lines too softly to be heard even by this theatergoer sitting four feet away.