Photo via Capital Fringe.

By DCist contributor Seth Rose

Reminds us of: Part Devil without the Shyamalan, part Saw without the gore

Flop, Fine or Fringe-tastic? Fine.

Annexus Theatre Company’s second Fringe offering Hello | Brother has lofty goals but doesn’t quite meet them all. It tells two stories of roughly equal length. In Hello, a woman is metaphorically trapped in an elevator with a talkative partner. In Brother, a man is literally trapped in a room with what appears to be a corpse. The tones of the two vary wildly: Hello is a relatively straightforward character piece rife with pregnant pauses and detailed exposition dumps, whereas Brother is a frantic, esoteric more-or-less one-man show with lots of yelling and inexplicable death metal interludes.

Playwright Solomon Haile Selassie clearly intended for these plays to feel connected, but this tonal dissonance makes that a difficult sell, and with only the thematic connection of being trapped in a metaphorical box tying them together, the two halves come off feeling somewhat insubstantial on their own. Hello hold ups better on the strength of some solid performances and a few inspired moments in the script, but Brother is far too stripped down. The intentional lack of context, minimal dialogue and rushed arc of action — to say nothing of the death metal interruptions — leads to a feeling of constant confusion. This off-putting quality isn’t necessarily unappealing, but it lacks the time and focus to deliver on this setup in a meaningful way.

What both halves needed most was ultimately more time to breathe, and indeed each might have worked better without the other. Together though, they feel like a bit less than the sum of their parts.

Hello | Brother is playing at Gallaudet University’s Eastman Studio Theatre on July 10 at 6:45 p.m., July 16 at 3:45 p.m., July 20 at 6:45 p.m., and July 23 at 9:30 p.m. Tickets are available here.

See here for more of DCist’s Capital Fringe 2016 reviews.