TOTS’ plays stutter

Theater

Lisa Gauthier

Expecting Isabel
Theatre on the Square
Directed by Ron Spencer
Through April 29

Exactly two years after putting up Lisa Loomer’s The Waiting Room, Theatre on the Square takes on another Loomer creation, Expecting Isabel.

Expecting Isabel is less a statement on women’s issues than The Waiting Room, although the subject does come up. Miranda (Lynn Burger) and Nick (Dave Ruark) are an infertile couple. More accurately, Nick’s sperm are duds, but it’s Miranda who has to undergo extensive hormone treatment — and endure all the accompanying side effects, including marital discord.

But this aspect of battling infertility doesn’t take center stage for the entire performance. Issues such as whether to have kids or not, extended family attitudes, the desire for kids that becomes an obsession, the cost of it all and the hurdles of adoption — both the process of it and the question of whether to — are just as prominent.

Overall, the show is a lightweight compared to The Waiting Room. Loomer tries to cram all aspects of infertility into this piece (which then lacks focus), making it rife with too many scenes (and, consequently, scene changes); this makes for less developed characters and situations, as well as a punctured viewing experience. Set Designer James Trofatter’s sparse set helps to keep the tech crew to a minimum on stage, but there is still too much going on.

Ruark and Burger handle their roles suavely, however. Coasting between scenes, they try to make the action as fluid as possible. But their characters weren’t written with a lot of depth (you even wonder why they are married, as they have little in common). A couple good segments, including the psychoses of the Winne the Pooh gang, shine through, and Ruark’s improv training garnered him laughs during a couple of flubs opening night.

Supporting actors play a multitude of characters, the best being Nick’s stereotypical Italian mother, played by Janet Ransdell, and Miranda’s alcoholic mother, played by K. Elaine Hooker.

Director Ron Spencer’s busy show is a sweet offering, but has symptoms of ADD. If you have been through the infertility struggle, you will probably get a lot more out of Expecting Isabel than those of us who haven’t.
Tickets are $20 ($17 students and seniors) and the show runs through April 29.

A work in progress

Leigh Mabry White and Lindsay Harbert in 'A Funeral for Eve'

A Funeral for Eve
People’s Playhouse
Theatre on the Square
Written and directed
by JT Robertson
Through April 30

People’s Playhouse is presenting a new work by JT Robertson, A Funeral for Eve. It meshes the biblical story of Lilith and Eve with modern-day sisters Lily and Evie.

It’s an intriguing idea, but it still needs some work.

The action alternates between contemporary times and some other time — perhaps a sort of dreamtime? — so often that the play has a jerky feel. After a while, it smoothes out a bit, and we get some longer narratives. But that doesn’t solve the appearances by a lineless Adam that seem pointless, or the interaction of Eve and Lilith that isn’t revelatory. In fact, these characters from Christian mythology are less interesting than their namesakes, the modern-day Lily and Evie.

Lindsay Harbert as Eve/Evie and Leigh Mabry White as Lilith/Lily give their best performances when they are playing their human characters; there is real interaction going on instead of pretentious bantering. Even if they are archetypes, we need to feel some sympathy for Eve and Lilith, but they come across more like competing rich old ladies than demi-gods.

Harbert’s Evie is a classic “good girl” who listens to her parents, marries young, keeps house and gets mistreated by her husband. White as Lily is a rebel who runs away, determined to make it in a man’s world on her own terms. Evie and Lily’s story is common, but it’s not enough to carry the rest of the show, which drags along until you are ready for Eve to hurry up and die already. The message about the bonds of womanhood is overly stressed, as is the assertion that men treat women like shit, which we already know.

There is an inspired moment or two. Most notably, the passage where Lilith says the cost of her freedom was that 100 of her children would die each day, in conjunction with Lily at the abortion clinic. Moments such as these show that, with some rewriting, this could become an insightful play.
Consider it a work in progress.

A Funeral for Eve, written and directed by JT Robertson, runs though April 30 at Theatre on the Square’s second stage. Tickets are $12.

For reservations to either of the shows at TOTS, 627 Massachusetts Ave., call 317-685-TOTS.