NEW YORK, January 25 — A male plumber and a female woodworker take the the art world by storm in “Catapult!” by Matthew James Fitzgerald, to be presented by Theater for the New City February 21 to March 10. The piece is a subversive commentary on the pretensions and ‘artspeak’ of the gallery scene. Fitzgerald is an actor, author, union carpenter, furniture designer and sometime history/english teacher.

The two-act comedy starts out in a gallery under renovation, with a charming and loquacious plumber, placing an assembly of pipes on a sculpture pedestal created by a sassy and articulate female woodworker. She embellishes this “sculpture” with a lipstick-kissed fragment of mirror and the plumber mockingly christens it “Fluidic Rapture.” It is harmless fun until a wealthy, matronly trendsetter sweeps into the gallery, pronounces their assemblage a conceptual masterpiece and insists on adding it to her collection. The two construction workers are thereby catapulted into the stratosphere of the art market, assisted by the opportunistic gallery owner. The ensuing play becomes a comedy on the jargon and puffery of the art scene. There are reversals and surprises: the plumber and woodworker become the toast of the town only to be undone by a scheming hedge fund manager, but are ultimately rescued by the high-handed doyenne who discovered them.