The SP Fish Market’s Last Day

in local D&D lore. With the help of 17-yearold Dungeon Master Chuck (Derek Delmar), newbie Agnes enters Tilly’s world in a betterlate-than-never effort to really get to know her.

As a middle-ager who even as a middleschooler couldn’t care less about D&D (or role-playing in general), undoubtedly some of the potential charm of Qui Nguyen’s She Kills Monsters is lost on me. Not being a nostalgic person, I don’t get a chuckle at the first occurrences of retrospective rib-ticklers like “56k [modem speed] per second — we’re talking blazing” or excitement about the new Smashing Pumpkins CD, let alone the eighth. And frankly, maybe I’m simply aged out of a play that reads like a romping 21st-century theatrical iteration of an ABC Aftershool Special.

But Long Beach Playhouse is staging it for general audiences, so here we are. Because Nguyen’s script probably isn’t intended to withstand close analysis, we’ll ignore logical inconsistencies with its conclusion; and because believable action is completely beside the point, we’ll forgive the fight choreography. But I’m not sure we can overlook the flatness of some of the acting. As played by Burrows, Tilly comes off too aloof in even the relatively few moments when she’s supposed to be betraying real emotion for us to care much about her — which is a bit of a pickle to begin with, since what we’re seeing isn’t actually Tilly but Agnes’ projection of her.

As Agnes — an emotionally meatier role — Gregory does better (especially in a couple