If You Start a Fire [Be Prepared to Burn]

  'Like the reply-all taboo and the necessity of logging out of a public computer, the latest formative lesson our society is learning is that absolutely anything posted online can take on a life of its own. Playwright Kevin Kautzman phrases it better in the enticing title of his new internet-age sex comedy, IF YOU START A FIRE [BE PREPARED TO BURN]. ...this script has so much fun guiding its characters into a zany, last-ditch enterprise...  The play’s emphatically contemporary context suits the immediacy of its premise. Lucy and Chris are a couple of textbook ninety-nine percenters, overeducated and underemployed in a crummy economy: She’s thanklessly waiting tables while toiling on an expensive MBA; he’s a college dropout whose service job affords them the barest health coverage. It’s a lamentable career picture for both, so for things to get worse merely adds insult to injury. And when the business world has no place for a couple of hungry, desirable youths, these two blaze their own trail that plays to their unique strengths-in this case, putting a technologically new spin on the oldest profession. ...Kautzman’s text is magnificent as he submerges these two characters robbed of forethought into a trajectory of pure discovery...  Kautzman ensures that the weirder the requests get, the funnier the interactions become, which helps to defuse the mounting tension of the second act: as their business grows exponentially, Lucy and Chris grapple with the changes in their relationship when sex becomes work, with morphing demands on their privacy and consent, and with the surprising consequences of success....  ...this cutting-edge, boundary-pushing comedy...'roguecritic.com