Why change now?

Akron’s none too fragile returns with more dark intensity with ‘Small Engine Repair’

From the start, none too fragile theatre in Akron has produced plays that offer the darker and more disturbing sides of the modern zeitgeist. Works such as Neil LaBute’s “In a Forest, Dark and Deep,” Johnna Adams’ “Sans Merci” and Matt Pelfrey’s “Pure Shock Value” take the stage rather than anything likely to be found on Playbill’s “MostPerformed Plays and Musicals” list.

As such, evenings tend to be more intense, daring and probing than pleasant.

John Pollono’s “Small Engine Repair” — which premiered in Los Angeles in 2011, had a brief off-Broadway run in 2013 and originally was scheduled for production at none too fragile theatre when the pandemic hit — certainly fits the bill.

A testosterone-fueled coming-of-middle-age comedy-thriller, the play features three working-class high school friends who have started to drift apart now that they are in their 30s. During this 75-minute one-act, single dad Frank (Brian Kenneth Armour),

a mechanic who is seething with regret, invites the gullible Packie (James Rankin) and the womanizing Swaino (Nicholas Chokan) to his auto repair shop for a drink that takes a dark turn upon the arrival of Chad (Memo Diaz-Capt), a spoiled college pretty boy and drug dealer.

The high-stakes story raises questions about social class, friendship, the internet and misogyny — and often does so in disquieting and discomfiting ways. One New York reviewer suggested the play resembles the exposition scenes of an uncommonly well-acted gay porn film, where nothing happens until it does. Another stated Pollono’s casual and crafty storytelling consists of 60 minutes of messy, meandering preamble that leads to one scene that justifies the entire enterprise.

Director David Vegh tends to agree, adding that “you don’t really know where the play’s going until you do, and then the bottom falls out like an amusement park ride. It takes a tremendous turn that you don’t see coming.”

In addition, says Vegh, there are no scene breaks, just a straight-shot dramatic arc that propels the characters from small talk and vulgar humor directly into life-or-death decisions in real-time.

“From a director’s perspective, it’s a challenge to keep the audience engaged when the play doesn’t offer much of a storyline to follow. And it challenges the actors to offer nuanced and layered performances that create real and likable characters without a whole lot of help from the playwright.”

But it’s these very challenges that have drawn Vegh to none too fragile as an audience member, an actor (most recently, Eric Coble’s “These Mortal Hosts”) and now director. And it’s the play’s goodness of fit with the theater’s mission of offering thought-provoking work that has kept it as the lead production for the