Photo by Isaiah Tanenbaum

Much like Dexter Morgan, graphic artist Jeff Lindsay’s darkly comic creation, uses his quench for serial killing to off other killers, so, too, does Doctor X, the deranged murderer with an MD, think he is doing his own type of public service. Doctor X, played with nimble exuberance by Flux Theatre Ensemble artistic director August Schulenberg in  the best stage performance to which I have ever witnessed him commit, has made it his mission to kill happy lovebirds in their sleep, thus preventing them from knowing the pain of broken hearts.

And remarkably, despite the many craft ways in which director Kelly O’Donnell has replicated a comic book feel for the New York stage production of Hearts Like Fists, it never feels lowbrow or churlish at all. That is largely due to the seamless way in which playwright Adam Szymkowicz, one of the leading theatrical voices of his generation, intertwines themes both humorous and mature together. And it is also due to the way O’Donnell and the Flux cast and crew embrace his ideas with both deftness and heft.

Doctor X’s lone enemy seems to be a syndicate known as the Crimefighters (Becky Byers, Rachael Hip-Flores, and Aja Houston), who attempt to stop his murderous rampage with less than perfect results. But they find a new ally in Lisa (Marnie Schulenberg). Buxom, thin, beautiful, Lisa herself doesn’t know heartbreak. But that changes when she starts dating a doctor named Peter (Chinaza Uche), who tells her that while her heart is strong, his has been damaged by disappointment in the matters of love. He has designed an artificial heart, and aspires to perform the first transplant on himself. Their different experiences lead to a turbulent start. Peter wants to bolt, while Lisa is incredulous at her first taste of abandonment, and both actors chart their characters’ seriocomic situations with careful calibration. So, too, does the always terrific Susan Louise O’Connor as a nutso nurse who pines for Peter while she herself ignores the one who longs for her (I won’t disclose who that is here).

Szymkowicz provides plenty of sugar to make his complicated medicine about crooked hearts go down smoothly. His dialogue comes riddled with memorably arch lines – “You have a face like a bowl of worms,” “You’re building a wall around your candy shell; you’re afraid I might eat it!” – that aren’t just hysterical, they’re psychologically accurate. He has created a fun show that refuses to be dumbed down.

It is also a show that takes full visual advantage of its comic-book sensibilities. O‘Donnell has managed to fill the potentially limiting space of the Secret Theatre with plenty of fun stagecraft to buttress its scenes, from Will Lowry’s colorful set design to Kia Rogers’ pulsating lighting set-up to, most especially, fight director  Adam Swiderski’s  battle choreography, mixing ninja movement with more gymnastic scenes of violence that feel authentic, never pantomimed. And though Szymkowicz could trim what feels like an extended climax, O’Donnell ensures that her terrific ensemble maintains a brisk pace for Fists, one of the more riotous and satisfying theatrical productions to emerge all season long. His imagination and her vision? Now those are what I call superpowers.

Hearts Like Fists

Presented by Flux Theatre Ensemble at the Secret Theatre, 42-02 23rd St, Long Island City. Thru December 15. www.fluxtheatre.org.

August Schulenberg asks clever questions in

Something wonderful is happening at the Secret Theater. Science fiction has taken over this Long Island City that’s begun to play host to a series of intellectually stimulating pulp theater, starting with Mac Rogers’ ongoing Honeycomb Trilogy with Gideon Productions there. Now, the provocative cyber-thriller Deinde joins the ranks as well. Who’d have thought such a small Off-Off-Broadway venue could provide such fertile soil for the sandbox of one’s mind?

Deinde, helmed by the winning team of playwright August Schulenberg and director Heather Cohn, is set in 2051. (Note: the two are part of the Flux Theatre Ensemble, which has mounted Deinde and provides the “F” in BFG, a collective sharing a half-year residency at the Secret; Gideon makes up the “G”). A team of dedicated quantum biologists faces a deadly virus, including Cooper Sands (David Ian Lee), whose wife is slowly dying from it. The team learns from intelligence expert Daniel Nemerov (Matthew Trumbull) about a system called Deinde (a humorous acronym for “Dineural Entangled Intelligence Network Device”), which will enhance their analytic capabilities and discover a vaccine for this scourge.

Apparently, though, in the future, what happens in practice is very different from what happens in theory. Elder team member Malcolm (Ken Glickfield) fears these “super-brains” will either alter or corrupt his scientists, and he’s within reason. It isn’t long before various side effects begin to tear his team apart at the seams, largely unfolding in a series of two-handers between members of the cast. Mac Silverhorn (an intensely committed Isaiah Tanenbaum) actively loses touch with his humanity, to the fright of best friend Bobby (Matthew Murumba) and intrigue of co-worker Jenni Long (Rachael Hip-Flores), who herself becomes detached from girlfriend Mindy (Sol Marina Crespo). Cooper, meanwhile, embarks on a new journey of his own, questioning loyalty to his wife over a connection to lead scientist Nita Ghosh (Nitya Vidyasagar).

A lot of these individual threads progress in ways you might expect, but woven together like a double helix, the carefully constructed Deinde becomes both suspenseful theater and intriguing bioethical commentary. What’s wonderful is just how much of this play’s progression happens in the minds of its characters, and, without showy visual effects, is communicated to the audience. Cohn is able to do this by eliciting touching, specific performances from her entire ensemble, from Lee’s palpably anguished Cooper to Trumbull’s awkward Nemerov to Tanenbaum’s funny-frightening Mac. Additionally, Will Lowry’s minimalist set design, quickly dispatched between scenes is wonderfully evocative.

Deinde takes a few turns for the self-indulgent. It’s currently far from a taut play, and could actually stand to lose about twenty minutes of its running time by trimming some redundant blubber. I also wish the relationship between Cooper and Nita had more of an ebb and flow to it, and that more attention was paid to the (de)evolution of Dara (Alyssa Simon), Cooper’s dying wife, currently an undernourished thread. But there is exceedingly more that works for Deinde than there is against it. Schulenberg has created a socially relevant cautionary tale about the uses and abuses of technology. And in saddling his message to a host of intriguing characters and a smart story, he comes to praise its possibilities, not bury them. Imagine that.

Deinde

The Secret Theatre, 44-02 23rd Street, Long Island City), thru May 12.

www.fluxtheatre.org