Review: “The Exterminators”: Two Characters, Doing the Numbers; or, Two Gasmasks, One Spraypack

The Exterminators

Written and directed by Maxwell Eberle

Presented in association with Center for Theatre Research at Center for Theatre Research

13 West 17th St., Manhattan, NYC

March 17-22, 2026

Auryn Rothwell and Yousuf Shah. Photo credit: Geve.

Often what is most disconcerting is not that which is seen, but what transpires out of sight. The unseemly unseen. In The Weird and the Eerie, Mark Fisher describes the eerie as emerging from questions of agency, when something appears where it should not be, or is absent where it should be. Maxwell Eberle’s new play, The Exterminators, locates that specific brand of the uncanny in a subterranean extermination prep chamber where death is a constant, procedural and concealed. The question is not what is being killed, but how one learns how to participate in the killing.

Eberle’s staging renders that process with stark visual economy: two lockers, two masks, two jumpsuits, and a single spraypack. From the outset, hierarchy is embedded in this liminal space. Bernie (Yousuf Shah), a temp, a replacement, gravitates toward the pack almost immediately, reading its warnings aloud and reaching for it before he understands its practical use. Paul (Auryn Rothwell), the old hand, intervenes, an insistence on procedure, establishing both authority and distance. Over time, all of a tight 50 minutes, that distance erodes. The spraypack, the instrument of death, becomes less a tool than a conduit, passed from one body to another until its use no longer requires instruction, only willingness.

Yousuf Shah. Photo credit: Geve.

That willingness is cultivated through language as much as action. Paul’s variable vocabulary, at once bureaucratic and self-consciously performative, functions as both instruction and insulation. Phrases repeat, like “the number is all that matters,” and the elevation of “shame” over apology replaces ethical reflection with procedural praxis. Even elliptical moments of aspirational lyricism are absorbed back into this system. When Paul slips into a heightened, almost poetic register, the gesture is undercut by a note passed from behind the unseen door, bluntly declaring “THAT SUCKED.” The effect is simultaneously comic and destabilizing. The unseen, beyond the curtain, is not inert; it observes, evaluates, and responds, complicating any attempt to reduce it to an object of labor. And it hates bloviation and purple prose.

The play’s central negotiation between human relation and institutional logic comes into focus in the drafting of the “Obligatory Pact of Abandonment.” Framed as a formality, and perfectly rendered, the contract formalizes what the system already requires: that productivity and survival take precedence over mutual care. Bernie’s instinct to seal the agreement with a spit-and-shake briefly gestures toward a more embodied form of trust, but it is the written pact that endures, providing the language through which future action can be justified. The contract does not simply describe behavior; it authorizes it.

In performance, the production finds its most compelling moments in the physical interplay between Rothwell and Shah - tension emerging not only from what lies beyond the unseen chamber, but from the proximity of the two men standing before the audience. Scenes of undressing, adjustment, and shared space carry an uneasy intimacy, oscillating between comic awkwardness and something more charged, more sinister. Rothwell’s Paul is particularly striking in his range, shifting from hard-nosed procedural authority to a more self-consciously articulate persona that seems designed to perform and obscure rather than reveal. Shah’s Bernie begins in uncertainty but gradually aligns himself with the rhythms of the role, not through conviction, but through repetition, his body learning what his conscience initially resists.

Auryn Rothwell and Yousuf Shah. Photo credit: Geve.

The audience, in turn, becomes implicated in that process. Laughter is frequent, often genuine and well-earned, but rarely comfortable. The play’s humor, at times edging toward slapstick, operates less as relief than as a means of management, allowing both characters and audience to navigate the discomfort of what remains unseen. As Paul grows more verbose, the laughter begins to feel like a shared strategy, a way of covering over the implications of the work being performed just out of sight. That way to the gas, ladies and gentlemen.

The play’s final sequence renders the play’s logic with unsettling focus and clarity. After a misfire leaves Paul incapacitated, Bernie initially attempts to drag him toward safety. But the system intervenes, not through force, but through language already internalized by the aspirant. Retrieving the contract from Paul’s body, Bernie reads it, absorbs its terms, and reverses course, dragging him back toward the extermination chamber. By the time he shoulders the spraypack and exits to continue the work, the transformation is complete. What remains is not the question of who or what is being exterminated, but the quiet efficiency with which one learns to carry the work forward, an eerie absence where ethical distinction and discernment might once have been.

-Noah Simon Jampol