I sat through fifteen minutes of Robohamlet before walking out. I know, I know - it’s lame and rude and all that, but I had no choice.

No, I didn’t expect a play with the name “Robohamlet” to be good. But I did expect it to be a good kind of bad, like an Ed Wood film. Consider this Nonsense NYC summation:

Robohamlet is the story of the extinction of the human race at the claws of their own creations, the Crylons, genetically modified crabs created to make a caviar substitute. The last humans make a brave stand, and the only weapon standing between them and annihilation is the Robot, who carries the burden of human culture and recites Shakespeare.

That sounds like campy fun, right? No? Whatever, I went.

I actually got to the Medicine Show Theatre, on glamorous West 52nd, ten minutes late. It was hot and the smell reminded me of that line from Fight Club about “the fart smell of steam and the hamster cage smell of wood chips.” Or perhaps that was the smell of Off-off-Broadway authenticity.

It was already Act Two. The Crylons had attacked, and now all four of the humans on Earth were defending their bunker, or whatever those randomly painted cardboard backdrops were supposed to represent. A Penn Jillette look-alike with a cornrowed mohawk delivered a hammy, audience-directed speech about the fighting so far - “Mistakes were made in the battle of Jersey City.” He had a plastic sword in his belt. Apparently all the costumes for this play were purchased at Halloween Adventure.

Another guy in a ripped red t-shirt - all clothes get ripped in the apocalypse - took a swig of Georgi and said “God, I hope we die soon.” It was a repeated line that got less and less funny every time, although more and more applicable to my own situation. Fun fact: red t-shirt dude was Christopher X. Brodeur, ex-New York Press cartoonist. Rudy Giuliani called him a “perverted little creep” once and it was the best thing that ever happened to him.

Anyway, after faux-Penn Jillette’s speech, some girl behind a cardboard “console” announced it was time to “Raise the force fields!” Force fields apparently require lots of flashing lights and everyone to act like they’re having a seizure. Then, it was time to “Lower the force fields!” And there were more lights and seizures! And “Raise the force fields!” Aaaand repeat.

The guy next to me found this shtick hysterical, as did several other audience members. They probably came out for Brodeur. Meanwhile, a woman whispered to her date, “This is great.” If someone took me to this play as a first date, I would never call them again. This is worse than having Dan Brown on your bookshelf, in terms of you never getting laid.

Finally, after all that bullshit, a robot took center stage. He looked suspiciously like a man with an aluminum foil-wrapped cardboard box around his torso, but I could tell he was a robot because he talked all funny and said things like “foo-lish hu-man.” And it’s at this point that I left. Why? Well, it was terrible. And someone had just texted me about an open bar. It was that or listen to Major Jillette rattle on about a Crylon death ray.

As I said, I had no choice.

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