Playwright Ed Valentine's pair of short one-acts, Scouts Honor! (Snipe Hunt & Becky's Beaver), attempts to give new meaning to the term Boy Scout camp. But instead of skillfully lampooning scouting as a homophobic bastion of budding homosexuality, Scout's Honor! tediously fumbles about, going for easy jokes that frequently fall flat.
Lost in the wilds of New Jersey, homoeroticism runs rampant as Boy Scouts search for the fictional snipe bird while, ahem, pitching a few tents in Snipe Hunt, and Girl Scouts bludgeon beavers while endlessly repeating the same pun for a very specific part of the female anatomy in Becky's Beaver. But despite drag performances and sex-ed demonstrations with fully functional beaver puppets, Scout's Honor! becomes mired in tedium with no real comic payoff.
The ensemble admirably attempts to squeeze as much humor as possible out of the play's tired gags, but the script simply isn't clever enough. With its dragging plot and scarcity of genuinely amusing jokes, Scout's Honor! just gets lost in the woods.
Presented by Cardium Mechanicum as part of the New York International Fringe Festival
at the Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal St., NYC.
Aug. 11-23. Remaining performances: Tue., Aug. 21, 9:15 p.m.; Wed., Aug. 22, 5:15 p.m.; Thu., Aug. 23, 3 p.m.
(212) 279-4488 or (888) 374-6436 or www.fringenyc.org.