Most of you are going to think I’ve become a gushing prissypussy after you read this, so let’s get my trademarked crabbiness out of the way: I saw We Need to Talk at Players, Please Theatre in Lombard. They started the show eight minutes late. And I hate it when theatre companies can’t spell the name of the show they’re doing. It’s right there on the script cover! Don’t be a lazy ass! (Yes, you, Riverfront Playhouse – “Grill”, indeed.)
In this night of one-acts, the opener by Mark McDonnell is called Marred Bliss – misspelled on the cover and in the program as Married Bliss. The actors’ bios spell it correctly. Now, since the whole play is about malapropisms and Freudian slips, the title is kind of important. Marred Bliss (directed by Patrick Newson) is also the weakest offering of the evening, but in ways that are correctable. The premise is that Jane (Jenny Kovich) and Dink (Matt Teichler) are “encaged” (engaged). They’ll be marred in just a few short whores. Jane is visited by Jeery (Kevin Atkinson) and Dink by Alas (Sarah Iazzetto), both former suitors, if not lovers. It’s a typical sitcom situation and potential David Ives ripoff, saved by the premise that their scrambled language reveals their real feelings and attitudes. And here’s where it goes wrong: directorially, it’s rushed. They’re zipping through right from the get-go, and it’s like Shakespeare: the audience needs a couple of minutes to become attuned to where the language is going. You need to ease into it until the audience is up to speed, then you can go as fast as you want when the lovers enter. There’s also a lot of movement just for the sake of movement, which becomes tiresome. I was thinking, “I’m in for a very long night here,” but none of the other shows made that mistake; in those, generally, movement had a reason. But the actors are all very good, and if the director would have a little more faith in the material (there’s a lot of punching and poking and prodding and picking), he could keep the pace but lose the franticness. It’s not a slapstick piece. The name of the evening is We Need to Talk – don’t be afraid to rely on the words.
The second play, The Problem by A.R. Gurney (directed brilliantly by Lisa Dawn Foertsch), is the high point of the evening. It concerns a married couple whose sex life is not what it seems to be. Ever. Especially when you think you’ve finally got a handle on it. Q. Alexander Bayola and Amanda Fisher really spark as the Husband and Wife. They’re both hysterically funny and intensely believable – and with this kind of comedy, it’s crucial that the actors involved take their game playing seriously. Bayola and Fisher are both playing to win and they make terrific opponents. Fisher has the comedic diffidence of Louise Lasser in early Woody Allen movies – the feeling that she wants to ask you if you’ve put it in her yet, but doesn’t know how to phrase it delicately. The most important quality that both actors have is that you look in their eyes and there is somebody home. If for no other reason, see the show for this play. The only gripe I have is that Gurney evidently spent some time in England: the premise is a variation of Harold Pinter’s The Lover and the ending is stolen nearly verbatim from a 1963 sketch by Eleanor Bron and John Bird, which is available on You Tube, done in the mid seventies by Bron and Peter Cook. But don’t look it up until after you’ve seen the show.
I’m in a quandary about intermission.Normally, the first act of a show is longer than the second. The first act of this show is thirty-five minutes. The second act is about forty-five to fifty. The show is about an hour forty (with intermission), which seems kind of short for a fifteen dollar ticket. Adding one more play to the first act wouldn’t have hurt. On the other hand, there was no air conditioning, so the length is probably fine. Don’t mind me… I go off on indecisive tangents like this. It will pass...
Night Visits by Simon Fill (directed by Lisa Dawn Foertsch) is next up. A nurse (Carla Marchese), a doctor (Conor Burke) and a mysterious, silent car accident victim (Jessica Morrison) confront the patient’s quiet refusal to leave the hospital – or is it to confront the doctor’s misery on the first anniversary of his wife’s death? It’s a thought-provoking piece, not really my cup of tea (for I have no thoughts to provoke). It’s quite well done, actually, but it ends up in a place that I’m personally not sympathetic with, being a cynical, crotchety bitch. I bite orphans and kick dogs. Morrison and Marchese have it nailed. Burke is a very good actor, but he doesn’t seem to have the life experience yet to reveal the ocean of pain behind the doctor’s sea wall of goofiness. I’m not slamming Burke, so no nasty letters, please. On a personal level, it’s probably a good thing he doesn’t yet have that kind of experience to delve into just for a part on stage; that will come in time.
4 AM (Open All Night) by Bob Krakower (directed by Patrick Newson) follows. In a seedy all night diner, the proprietor Jim (Q. Alexander Bayola) and very, very strange customer Doc (Kevin Atkinson) try with all of their might and wit to get the Guy (Ryan Williams) to say “Hello” to the Girl (Lindsey O’Neill) and start a relationship. It’s funny, moves quickly (but not frantically) and has a great deal to say about the fear and insecurity that prevents lonely people from taking a chance on a relationship. Everybody in this one was spot on and the directing was smooth. Nice work.
Finally, there is Finger Food by Nina Shengold (well directed by A. Monnie Aleahmad). This was basically a Second City sketch to round off the evening with a bang. Denny (Eric Blomquist), a photographer for a wine ad, awaits the arrival of his hand model Carla. Instead, he gets Mona (Becky Crawford), whose pride in the beauty of her fingers is exceeded only by her knowledge of how men lust for her digits. It’s a standard issue comedy-reversal sketch where people find everything erotic except what are normally considered Targets of Mass Erection. But it’s very funny. Blomquist is very good as the jittery but aroused photographer and Crawford seizes the stage and doesn’t let go. She slams home a hurricane comedy performance in a one-act that calls for exactly that style of humor. Subtlety, go home!
This is a relatively new troupe (they must be – I haven’t seen them before; that proves it) and you need to give them a look. Players, Please Theatre put together an extremely funny, impressive show with far more meager resources than most theatres in the area possess. The directing was sharp, clear and the scene changes didn’t take longer than they needed to. All of the acting was at minimum engaging and at maximum brilliant (Fisher, Bayola, Crawford).
And I just went through a whole review without ripping anyone a new asshole – I need to lay down for a while.
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