Switch To Kill, an installment part of The Brick’s Comic Book Theater festival, is everything you could hope for in a comic book inspired play. There’s suspense, villainous hit men, wonderful costumes, dark noir music and loads of action.

The show follows a few story arcs that sometimes overlap. There’s dangerously funny Frank the Shank (Bryan Enk) and Cecilia De La Croix (Lex Friedman), who make the mistake of trusting notorious hit men partners Buck Dangerzone (Stephen Heskett) and Dallas Twilite (Sam Anderson).  Dangerzone and Twilite, the main characters of the show, have a Vincent Vega/Jules Winnfield feel to their relationship, discussing cold-blooded murder in between lighter topics. Although Dangerzone is clearly the brains of the operation, they both keep quick pace in their hilarious verbal sparring matches they have with each other.  Dangerzone is manipulative, bringing up Twilite’s late younger brother who died of a tragic accident caused by Twilite, to control him. Their friendship is complicated despite the fact that their “partners 50/50” professional relationship is simple.

Also in the mix is Ian W. Hill, playing Jimmy the Face, a Jack Nicholson-esque legend whose weapon of choice is a bottle opener and Massacre Mel (Stephanie Cox-Williams), a killer with a fondness for chainsaws and somehow manages to be scary even while wearing a blue pastel muumuu.  Jimmy and Mel discuss getting out of the murder-life, but not before one more job involving Bohannan (the poetic Matthew Addison).  Paul J. Kim joins the rest as Stan the Man, a fast talking salesman and the only one of the cast who can do a convincing 50’s gangster accent.

The play, written by Dean Hapiel and designed and directed by Ian W. Hill, assisted by Berit Johnson, combines humor and violence with very little scenery to create a world where hit men and their idols hang out in dark bars, bad guys are not always unlovable, and old ladies with raspy laughs are sometimes more dangerous than young crime lords.