‘The Garbologists' is a comic drama with two stars, a lot of trash, and a destination in mind

Boston Globe

07-07-2025

The answer turns out to be yes in Lindsay Joelle's 'The Garbologists.' While her two-hander, now at Gloucester Stage Company, does indeed spin its wheels about halfway through, Noelle knows where she's going. So does Rebecca Bradshaw, Gloucester Stage's producing artistic director, who's at the helm of production. So, for that matter, do Paul Melendy and Thomika Marie Bridwell, the estimable duo charged with taking the audience on trash-collection trips through the streets of Manhattan during winter time. The payoff, emotionally speaking, is substantial when we arrive at the play's destination.
Melendy plays Danny, a white, voluble, 41-year-old man with nearly a decade of trash-collecting under his belt. Bridwell is his new partner, Marlowe, a Black woman in her late 30s who is initially as terse as Danny is talkative.
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Structurally, 'The Garbologists' combines the archetypal odd-couple pairing with the scorpions-in-a-bottle atmosphere that often ensues when mismatched people are locked within a confined space — in this case, a garbage truck. 'Do people ever tell you they want to strangle you?' asks an exasperated Marlowe. Without missing a beat, Danny replies: 'All the time.' We believe it.
Danny and Marlowe are both nursing wounds — one much more severe than the other.
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Bradshaw and her creative team, especially set designer Kristin Loeffler, nail the specifics of garbage collection, up to and including the garbage truck in which Marlowe and Danny sit. Joelle wanted it to look like Danny and Marlowe are doing actual work as they hoist trash bags into that truck, and it does. We get a sense of the wide variety of objects trash collectors have to handle: Stuffed animals, sports trophies, a box of … let's call them erotic aids.
We also learn a few things about the hidden dangers of trash collection, as when Danny abruptly pulls Marlowe away from the back of the truck and vehemently cautions her about dangerous substances, such as hydrochloric acid, that can 'eat your lungs, burn you from the inside. Closed casket at your funeral' if the truck's hopper blade comes down on a bag containing that acid.
By one of those weird art-imitating-life coincidences noted by Bradshaw in pre-show remarks at Sunday's performance, 'The Garbologists' has taken the stage at a time when Gloucester, along with a number of other communities, has been coping with a strike by trash collectors.
In the realm of fictional drama and comedy, the occupation of trash collection has sometimes been woven into the story, but seldom with as much respect and as little condescension as in 'The Garbologists.' Remember how Tony Soprano always claimed to be in 'the waste management business'? Or the episode on the NBC sitcom '
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Marlowe has a degree in art history from an Ivy League college, and the fact that she has chosen to be a sanitation worker is a source of bewilderment to Danny, and to us in the audience as well for much of the play. Bit by bit, they start to confide aspects of their personal lives.
Anyone who has seen Melendy in action over the last decade knows what an exceptionally agile comic performer he is. While he overdoes the dese-dems-dose stuff in the early going, it's not long before he's adding layers to his portrayal of Danny and smoothly navigating the play's tonal shifts. As he proved three years ago by playing nearly 20 characters in
He doesn't need to in 'The Garbologists.' Bridwell has been a busy and welcome presence on Boston stages in recent years, with indelible turns in
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Its flaws notwithstanding, 'The Garbologists' is a worthy addition in the American theater's ever-growing roster of comic dramas. Indeed, the guiding principle of that genre can't be better stated than it is in a note by Joelle on her script: 'This play is a comedy for as long as possible.'
THE GARBOLOGISTS
Play by Lindsay Joelle. Directed by Rebecca Bradshaw. Presented by Gloucester Stage Company, Gloucester.
Through July 26. Tickets $64-$72. At 978-281-4433 or
Don Aucoin can be reached at