You know you’re at Fringe Fest when the best part of the show is when someone loses a kidney. As the title indicates, Nephrectomy is a dark comedy about three mall employees with borderline personalities and a penchant for organ removal.

The play begins innocently enough, as the audience is introduced to Mattie (Lauren Padgett) and Honor (Michelle Norris), two comic book store employees with polar opposite personalities. While Honor is mousy and painfully meek, Mattie is mean, in-your-face, and manipulative. The storyline centers on a love triangle between the two girls and Luke (Josh Heard), a washed-up Star Wars nerd and the store’s assistant manager. Honor loves Luke, but, unsurprisingly, Luke hardly knows Honor exists. Meanwhile, Mattie seems to only take joy in break-up sex and making Honor’s life miserable. Things only start to get interesting when the play throws off the usual romantic comedy tropes and the kidneys start coming out.

While any play about revenge organ removal is bound to be a little ridiculous, some of the emotional turns in Elizabeth Hagerty’s script are incredibly abrupt. The character archtypes are so familiar that pairing them with an over-the-top story line feels too jarring. Despite valiant acting efforts, particularly on the part of Norris and Heard (who plays a very convincing nephrectomy victim), it’s hard to feel emotionally-invested in the show. At best, the characters seem to be terrible in a self-obsessed Seinfeld-ian way; at worst, they’re just bat-shit crazy meanies. In the end, Nephrectomy has its moments, but it isn’t quite funny or bold enough to overcome the shortcomings in the script.

Remaining performances:

Saturday, July 20 at 4 p.m.
Wednesday, July 24 at 8:15 p.m.
Saturday, July 27 at 3:45 p.m.

At Gearbox, 1021 7th Street NW, 3rd floor.

Click here to buy tickets.