Four Stupid Terrorist(s)
Written and directed by Emily Andrews.
Presented by Paperwaster Productions (Raymond, NH).
Presented by the New York City Fringe Festival
April 13 at 9:20 PM, April 14 at 6:00 PM, April 15 at 9:20 PM, April 17 at 6:00 PM, April 19 at 2:00 PM, 2026.
The conceit of Four Stupid Terrorists announces itself in the title before the lights go up: not dangerous terrorists, not tragic ones, not even comprehensible ones. Stupid ones. Emily Andrews, who wrote, directed, and produced the show, is herself a chemist working in the New Hampshire seacoast scene. Two of her cast members are also chemists. One is a software engineer. One is a practicing attorney who also teaches mock trial at the University of New Hampshire. One is a formally trained actor, a graduate of the two-year Meisner program at the William Esper Studio, the lone conservatory professional in a group of community-based artists who have been making theater together in Portsmouth-area venues for years. What Andrews has assembled is a group of people who understand, with professional precision, exactly how broken the systems they inhabit are, and asked them to perform the logical endpoint of that understanding: the moment a cohort of brilliant, privileged young chemistry students conclude that the only remaining option is terrorism. The comedy arrives immediately. It turns out to be very difficult to commit an act of terrorism when you have a conscience.
Andrews pitches the comedy at the level of frustrated idealism: these four believe, with complete conviction, that they are the only people capable of saving the world, and the humor comes from watching that conviction collide with their staggering incompetence. But the undercurrent is darker, and Andrews never quite lets you forget it. Fighting by committing terrorism is stupid. The play’s real position is that fighting at all is stupid. The hidden message, carried in every beat where the characters’ certainty outstrips their capability, is that we are doomed as a species and suffering is our birthright. Nick Pollak, who plays Dylan, holds an actual doctorate in chemistry from UNH, a DOE Graduate Student Research Fellowship, and spent months at Brookhaven National Laboratory studying photocatalytic carbon dioxide reduction: harnessing sunlight to break CO2 bonds, trying to turn the emissions of industrial civilization into something useful. He tried the sanctioned route. It was not enough. Now he is onstage as the character whose particular idiocy seals the group’s fate, and what you laugh at, you also grieve. We know it is wrong to kill people. Unfortunately, the people in power have no such limitations.
What is surprising, given everything the cast brings from outside the theater, is how fully they inhabit the work inside it. Avocational performers can struggle to conceal effort. Dedicated actors can wear their training like a uniform. This ensemble does neither. There is a natural ease here, an honesty of reaction and comic timing between the four leads, that companies of considerably greater acclaim would be hard-pressed to match. When one of the group loses her nerve at the critical moment, refusing to go through with killing anyone, the moment reads as a real human failure of will. Her target, J.S. Howard’s “The Guy,” obliges the universe’s indifference by dying of fright before the chemicals ever arrive, dispatched by the atmosphere these four create rather than by anything they actually do. Their hands are clean. The outcome is identical. The small audience at Wild Project’s 90-seat house suited the work: these four did not need to project, and the intimacy sharpened everything. That so few people were in the room is its own small indictment: of the festival calendar, or our attention, or both.
Andrews directs with a sure hand, and the choice to imply rather than stage the group’s ultimate fate is brave in its restraint. A moment of suspension around how and why they are discovered leaves the mechanics of their downfall opaque in a way that is hard to call with any confidence: deliberate ambiguity or a structural gap. What is clear is that the comedy’s mercy, its choice to spare us the deaths the material has earned, softens an ending the rest of the show supports going darker. The nihilism is full-throated right up until the final beat. It deserves a final beat that matches it.
Four Stupid Terrorists is one of the more alarming and funny pieces in this year’s NYC Fringe Festival. It is made by people who know, technically and professionally, exactly what is happening to the planet and exactly how little power most of us have to stop it. The surprise is not that they made a play about terrorism. The surprise is how funny it is, and how sad, and how those two things refuse to separate. J.S. Howard’s bio describes the New Hampshire theater community as “surprisingly robust.” Four Stupid Terrorists is evidence. Go see it before the run closes.
Click HERE for tickets.
Review by Ariel Estrada.
Published by Theatre Beyond Broadway on April 18, 2026. All rights reserved.
