Eric Alter is a hard-working and prolific playwright whose strongest trait, as revealed in these three short plays at any rate (he has written 45 or so others), is character development. His characters come on stage with well-developed histories, which inform the dramatic conflicts that subsequently unfold.
Peaches n' Cream (directed by Rob Sullivan) details a routine lunch between two women friends, Jackie and Priscilla (Brooke Campbell and Lilli Marques). Priscilla is so positively ebullient that Jackie has avoided meeting her - who can stand to listen to these "friends" whose only goal seems to be to make you feel miserable? But Jackie wants to share bad news with Priscilla - Jackie 's husband has run off. Naturally, Priscilla puts a positive spin on it, offering all sorts of vague and vacuous advice - until she learns that he has run off with Priscilla's husband, that is. Jackie's revenge is complete.
This play points out a common trait of Alter's plays, of a formulaic situation created by bringing characters together more or less by accident. But these are characters, nonetheless, and the twist, while not entirely unpredictable, is refreshing. Marques was aptly cast as the cellphone-wielding, superficial Priscilla; Campbell for the first half of the play kept upstaging herself across their shared table, only "cheating out" (and being seen in other than profile) in the second. (Also featuring Matt McCarthy as the harassed waiter.)
First Kiss (directed by Gerard Mawn) puts two soldiers together in a foxhole in Yugoslavia. They talk about food and girls, until one of them (Joe Danbusky as Nate) is shot. Nate, who has just confided to Kelby (Mike Moller) that he is a virgin, now says that he is also gay, and that as his last wish he wants Kelby to kiss him. Kelby, the unregenerate homophobe, does so, and Nate dies.
This play suffers from the same faults as its predecessor, in addition to which some portions of dialog have a static, wordy quality - they remain rooted in the page. (A reliable source says that the situation is like Kiss of the Spider Woman.) But the two characters have plenty of detail. Danbusky and Moller were believable, though Danbusky could have shown a higher energy level. The play was unfortunately blocked on the floor (but how else could you block it, without investing in a raised set piece of some kind?), and thus Nate's death scene was visible from the shoulder down only - and offered a view of just one arm. But his use of that arm was convincing. (His dialect, too.)
The King and Queen of Planet Pookie (directed by Alter) is the most problematic of the plays, although the least formulaic. Mitchell (Justin Leader), an astronomy-club geek, is out with his telescope looking at the stars, when Remi (Sophia Takal) walks in out of nowhere and starts to engage him in discourse that his life experience has not prepared him for. Remi is a runaway girl of about Justin's age, but of much greater experience. There is much banter about Justin's virginity and Remi's lack of it, much of which goes over Justin's head, and much talk by him of things astronomical, which goes over Remi's head. Justin then lets on why he is out there in the first place: to witness his dead sister's re-entry into the atmosphere in the form of a shooting star. (The premise that she has turned into a star doesn't quite connect with the conclusion that she has been transformed into a meteor, and one whose arrival can be predicted with precision. Nor is it plausible that an aspiring amateur astronomer would try to take a picture of a heavenly object with a handheld camera instead of attaching it to his telescope.) Mitchell and Remi go off together after he offers to put her up in his treehouse, where his mother will help look after her.
The implausibilities of the script notwithstanding (implausible even within the framework of a fantasy), this is the freshest of the three. Mitchell comes across as a genuine and touching character, and Leader gave him vulnerability and enthusiasm. Remi wanders in more for the sake of the dramaturgy than any other apparent reason. Takal was hard to hear, even in a tiny theatre, and had irritating hand movements. Her technique for wielding a cigarette was implausible, and she devoured a proffered sandwich by holding the wrapper in one hand and pulling pieces off the sandwich with the other. (And why, if she was starving, did she put the second one in her pocket?) The actors brought to mind the director who threatened to nail the actors' feet to the floor if they didn't stop wandering from their marks.
Despite all the caveats, this was an entertaining evening of absorbing plays. It is to be hoped that Alter continues to hone his craft and puts more of it on display in the future.
There were no design credits for lighting, set, or costumes, which were functional at best.
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Copyright 2001 John Chatterton