Le Wilhelm, the guiding force behind Love Creek Productions, is a solid and experienced playwright, director, and producer. It came as no surprise, then, that this evening of his one-acts, all but one of which he directed, showed considerable craftsmanship and some artistry.
Amaretto and Autumn (directed by Debbie Feldman) had the most depth. Two women (Beverly Bullock and Catherine Hennessey) reminisce on the balcony of an Italian hotel about a trip they took to the same seaside town many years before. It turns out they have both been keeping secrets about that evening, the nature of which is revealed one layer at a time. One (Bullock) was jealous that the other was interested in her husband, George; she forged a love letter suggesting an assignation, figuring the other would go to the assigned place, George wouldn't show up, and that would be the end of a possible fling. What she didn't know was that her rival called George, made the assignation, and possibly had a child from it. This dredging of the secret hostilities of decades past was performed under the guise of apparently loving reminiscence by two old friends. Bullock and Hennessey peeled the layers with subtlety and relaxed good humor.
Flow Blue in Tragic Motif took a turn toward the melodramatic with brother (Gary, played by Geoffrey Dawe) telling his sister (Peggy, played by Kirsten Walsh) that their father's grave had been vandalized. It came as no surprise that Peggy, by her own admission a bit unbalanced, had done it. The revelations of the father's brutality to her and her mother dragged the play close to bathos. Dawe turned in a subtle and grounded performance; Walsh tended to favor the hysterical side of her character, a temptation that must have been hard to avoid. With both characters straining to tell the audience their stories, this play stretched its seams a bit.
Cherry Blend and Vanilla takes the audience to the south, where a widow, Ada (Katherine Parks), and her daughter, Peggy (Katherine Kelly Lidz), are out picnicking down by the river. They smell Dad's favorite tobacco on the breeze. While Peggy is off on a dramaturgically appropriate errand, Dad (Jon Oak) appears, smoking his pipe. He tells Ada a bunch of lies about his catting around on Earth, with the effect that she vows to start getting about on her own - exactly the goal he intended. Peggy and Ada chatted away about things they already knew as though they hadn't seen each other for a week.
Rage Incorporated plays a joke on the audience that only close reading of the program beforehand will prevent. Chris Weir plays (very hammily) three men in sketches with women (Leslie Glaser, Kymm Zuckert, and Ali Baynes) who treat him with contempt. When he tells Glaser, an ex-wife, that he has three months to live, she is triumphant; Zuckert played a woman who cares for her senile father by force-feeding him disgusting soup - which she spits in for good measure; and Baynes played a secretary who (in unlikely fashion, for anyone in the corporate world) gets to switch roles with her boss - and treats him as badly as he treated her, in an obvious ripoff from the movie 9 to 5. A final sketch reveals that Weir and his business partner (Liz Peterson) provide these sketches as a service to women who want to act out and exorcise their rage, a clever if anticlimactic twist. Only an uncharitable audience would resent the joke played on them. (Peterson performed a delightful set change.)
The Two Elizabeths is a monolog by Elizabeth, an ex-hippie (Cynthia Granville) who reminisces about her easygoing philosophy of the past. She then goes on to describe another Elizabeth (her friend Libby), who was killed at the WTC, suggesting that 9/11 changed her philosophy forever. It would be churlish to suggest of such a touching performance and such sensitively mined material that the play itself is rather slight, but there it is. Nevertheless, Granville and Wilhelm here left a firm but delicate impression.
The costumes were well-chosen. The sound was a rather heavy-handed but well-chosen selection of musical numbers. The lighting came from a handful of instruments facing upstage, with no backlighting (even though there was a smattering of instruments upstage that might have provided it), lending a flat, harsh look to the proceedings that did nothing to flatter the actors. The sets were a few functional pieces.
|
|
Writing |
Directing |
Acting |
Set |
Costumes |
Lighting/Sound |
|
Amaretto |
2 |
2 |
2 |
1 |
2 |
0/1 |
|
Flow Blue |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
0/1 |
|
Cherry Blend |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
0/1 |
|
Rage |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
0/1 |
|
Elizabeths |
1 |
2 |
2 |
1 |
1 |
0/1 |
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Copyright 2001 John Chatterton