In Looking for Love (In All the Wrong Places), four short comedies garner laughs aplenty for the end of Starlite Players’ first season, showcasing playwrights, casts, and crews from the Tampa Bay area down to Venice in Sarasota County.
The Chatterbox Club by James Rayfield features a Cafe in which the menu consists of different “courses” of conversation. Natalia Mock is the Hostess who keeps patron Grant (Paul Mullen, eager and finally smooth) to the terms of purchase. Kim Kollar’s Gail’s appetizers prove too light, and an appearance of loud and boozy Eddie (Stephen Emery, boisterous) interrupts the meal. Luckily, Gail satisfies Grant’s appetite. Brad Wages dished up the proper direction to take for a comedy that begins subtlely.
The Unmovable Seat by Martin Tucker has Jamie Lee Butrum astutely directing three patrons of a theater who don’t want to sit in the seats they booked. Phyllis (sophisticated Diana Shoemaker) finds herself in the midst of current Italian cutie Antonio (Rafael Petlock, very macho) and her former lover Jonathan (Mark Woodland, smart). He’s an arts critic who never meant to be at this particular performance either onstage or off. Phyllis’ two-fold dilemma gets solved by each man in his own way for a happy ending. Stephen Cooper’s Confessions a Deux by Stephen Cooper seems to be (for many in the audience) the comedy highlight of the shortest plays. Mark Woodland has ably directed many quick scenes and quirky action showing Scott Vitalie as Father Shannon nervously hearing his first confession, and it’s from his superior Neil Levine’s gently authoritative Father Gregory. After they change places, Father Shannon’s confessing fornication with a parishioner leads to weeks of further cooperation in their contacts with her. Very funny.
Rage Against the Robot by Jack Gilhooley is the longest play, at 35 minutes running time, all of it well paced by director Carole Kleinberg. Prostitute Chantel, portrayed on the mark by Natalia Mock as sexy and sexually if not otherwise smart, seeks out lawyer Gerald (Rafael Petlock, going from ambivalent to engaged). She’s been charged for murder of a Robot who attacked her in a park. Unfortunately for her, he’s much loved by hordes of children. Even though it was in self defense that she tore off his arm holding her bra and that her breast got bruises, will the evidence be enough to help her? Will Gerald’s partner Atticus help on the case? How much money will be involved? Still, how could she be convicted of the death of a creature who never lived? Answers pile up comically, and the actors give them really rightly.
