She Kills Monsters

Two sisters embark on a Dungeons & Dragons role-playing adventure in Qui Nguyen's "She Kills Monsters" and discover that while they're battling bugbears, demons, and the like, they're also coming to know each other in ways they never imagined possible. It's a sweet premise that pungently deals with many issues facing teenagers today (principally the bullying of young gays and lesbians), but the show, directed by Nguyen's frequent Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company collaborator Robert Ross Parker, can't escape feeling like a souped-up ABC Afterschool Special.

It's the older of the sisters, the ever-so-sensible Agnes (Satomi Blair), who instigates the journey into the world of D&D, after she discovers a game module created by Tilly (Allison Buck), the kid sister she's never bonded with. Agnes tracks down Chuck (Jack Corcoran), a pal of Tilly's and the game's dungeon master. Soon he and Agnes are rolling multisided dice, and the world that Tilly has imagined—which includes her avatar, Tillius the Paladin, "healer of the wounded and the protector of lights" (also Buck), and this character's compatriots, demon warrior Lillith (Margaret Odette) and self-possessed dark elf Kalliope (Megha Nabe)—comes to life around Agnes.

There are numerous surprises in store for both Agnes and Tilly as the battle-filled game progresses, and with each new challenge there's more than ample opportunity for some pretty specialized fight choreography (from Mike Chin), which the company performs gamely if unevenly. Further, Nguyen intercuts what's happening in Tilly's imagined world with real-world events, allowing Agnes—and the audience—to realize that the game is really just a compendium of thinly veiled portraits of herself and her school chums.

Parker has elicited an uneven array of performances from the cast of this bifurcated, sometimes Pirandellian piece. Among the standouts are Buck, who makes Tilly/Tillius thoroughly winning and puckish, and Odette, who captures the gleeful ravenousness of Lillith. The multiply cast Nicky Schmidlein displays a gift for comedic timing in her scenes with Agnes at the school where she works, and Brett Ashley Robinson momentarily steals the show as a foulmouthed fairy in the D&D world.

But while these performances delight, others are less successful. Blair ultimately proves charming as Agnes, but her work early on is overly wooden, as is Bruce A. Lemon's turn as Agnes' stick-in-the-mud boyfriend, Miles. Similarly, Raúl Sigmund Julia, as a demon overlord, and Nabe, as the vampy elf, deliver sadly one-note turns.

What impresses most consistently are the contributions of costume designer Jessica Pabst, whose work deftly brings a wide variety of creatures to life with witty panache, and puppet designer David Valentine, whose vision of a multiheaded dragon in the final scene is astounding. It's the memory of his work—rather than the messages of tolerance that underscore the play—that theatergoers will most likely carry with them after the show has ended.

Presented by and at the Flea Theater, 41 White St., NYC. Nov. 17–Dec. 23. Tue.–Sat., 7 p.m.; Sat. and Sun., 3 p.m. (No performances Wed.–Fri., Nov. 23–25.) (212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, www.theatermania.com, or www.theflea.org.