At Sarasota’s Starlite Theater, four sparkling short comedies drew sellout crowds for evenings and an over half-full audience for a specially called Sunday matinee to accommodate people who don’t drive at night or do but couldn’t get into the sellout eves.
What Remains by Heather Jones takes up a desire on the part of a nurse (Madison Jones’s Muriel) and a vintage shop owner (Natalia Mock’s Annabeth) to get the treasures of an old dying woman, Helen, who’s saved everything from each decade of her life. Both actresses gush over a few items on the premises and especially the things described by Muriel that are still in Helen’s house. Their plan to usurp them is almost foiled by appearance of a daughter and granddaughter who’re equally gushy about Helen’s stuff. Fun ensues through scenes of murderous planning that are merrily macabre.
The Session is a psychiatric one between Brenda(Natalie Mock) the therapist and her client Martin. Tyler Yurckonis, owner of the Starlite Room, debuts impressively as a man seeking help with marriage problems. Writer Jack Gilhooley has packed much suggestiveness into Martin’s accounts of his problems. Natalie Mock’s assertive Brenda increasingly reminds him of his wife.
The play ends with Brenda confessing what she’s had to do “to make a living” and that is a happy ending to Martin’s session. Director Daniel Greene happily called for more physical activity than one would anticipate and it all worked. As he showed in his What Remains direction, he makes his casts capture the imaginative aspects of dyadic communication.
Pete’s Place is Betty Robinson’s way of describing heaven, which is behind a curtain on a bar scene run by Michael Kinsey’s glib Gabe. It’s a sort of purgatory in which Verity (almost breathless Mary Jo Johnson) wonders why she’s having to wait there. Apparently he’s there to pass the time while decisions are made about who goes through the curtain or takes an elevator down. The fun gets funniest when each finds out how they might have met before and what might have come of the circumstances. Mark Woodland directed to achieve maximum suspense.
Talkback by Jo Morello made a hilarious end piece. In the Stratford (on Avon) Little Theatre and Cultural Center stage, Lady Jane (a very mod Madison Jones) is operating a futuristic machine (computer) to record a tryout to be done of a play by Will Shakespeare (hearty and soon to be challenged David Downer). In command (as Carolyn Zaput shows herself to be) is Elizabeethe, who seems to know little about any of Will’s plays and great success in London. The banter among the three consists of fractured iambic pentameter, mostly rhyme, sprinkled with actual Shakespearian lines and Elizabethan words. As the title of the program suggests, the unexpected was a smash hit. Tim Guerrieri’s direction matched the super intelligence of the script. A major 20-minute piece!
