As with Baker’s “Circle Mirror Transformation,’’ with which it shared this year’s Obie Award for Best New American Play, “The Aliens’’ is an impressionistic take on the seemingly random way people breeze into our lives and then, sometimes, breeze right out again, though not without leaving a significant mark.
When the play begins, two bearded, thirtyish guys named Jasper (Nael Nacer) and KJ (Alex Pollock) — neither of whom appears to have a hygiene fetish — are sitting behind a coffee shop in Shirley, Vt. I’d say they were killing time, but KJ, at least, doesn’t look as if he could muster the will to do anything that involves a transitive verb. He wears a beatific — or is it stoned? — expression as he lounges at a table, gazing dreamily off into the distance. No such tranquillity is evident in Jasper, who squats on a milk crate, taking angry puffs from a cigarette, a storm raging in his face.
Minutes pass. No words are spoken. Finally, KJ begins to sing. When he’s done, Jasper offers a few words (six, to be precise) of praise, and they subside into silence again. Eventually, the silence is broken. Jasper bitterly complains about his ex-girlfriend. He gets so exercised that he kicks over a chair.
At that point, a 17-year-old employee of the coffee shop named Evan (Jacob Brandt) materializes. Clearly nervous — he is quivering like a tuning fork — Evan informs the two older guys that they’re not supposed to loiter behind the shop. But he doesn’t really seem to want them to go.
