Twelfth Night at Lakewood Playhouse

Tights, fights, and very funny sights

by Michael Dresdner

It’s challenging to make a Shakespearean comedy as genuinely funny to modern audiences as it was meant to be, but thanks to an absolutely stellar cast under the excellent direction of Rachel Fitzgerald, Lakewood Playhouse has done it. Twelfth Night is a gem; a fast-paced, delightfully hilarious romp.

Left to right: Clifford Peddicord, Russ Coffey, Brittany D. Henderson 

There’s a plot, of course, which is as convoluted as you can imagine and loaded with characters, too numerous to mention, who help connect the dots. Fortunately, the plot does not get in the way of the real hilarity, most of which comes from sub-plots and irrelevant hijinks. Here’s a relatively brief overview.

Viola (Maggie Lofquist) lands on Illyria convinced her twin brother Sebastian (Alex Smith) has died in a shipwreck. She dresses as a man named Cesario to get employment with Duke Orsino (Mason Quinn), and soon falls in love with him. But the Duke is in love with Olivia (Angelica Duncan), who won’t have him. She instead falls for Viola/Cesario, who is acting as the Duke’s messenger, thus creating an interesting love triangle. However, the Duke also has what he sees as an unexplainable homosexual attraction to his new servant Cesario.

Eventually, a very alive Sebastian, who likewise believes his sister is dead, shows up with his friend and protector Antonia (Kait Mahoney.) While she gets arrested for prior offenses, he meets Olivia, who mistakes him for his cross-dressing twin Viola/Cesario. She pours out her love to him and he marries her on the spot, conveniently ignoring the fact that she calls him by the wrong name.

Meanwhile, lots of other shenanigans are going on in the household of the high born Olivia. Anchoring the hilarity are two screamingly funny drunken reprobates; Olivia’s brash, besotted uncle, Sir Toby Belch (Clifford Peddicord), and his clueless, clumsy sidekick, Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Russ Coffey). Aiding and abetting them are their female counterparts, Maria (Deya Ozburn) and Fabian (Brittany D. Henderson.) Granted, women of the time had to be more restrained, and less inebriated, but they do a wonderfully nuanced job of keeping up their end of the craziness. Whenever these four outstanding actors come on stage you are in for a rollickingly delightful time.

In fact, the only one who could edge them out for “steal the show” credits is their chief victim, Olivia’s pompous, stuffy steward Malvolio (Ian Lamberton). The comic gang of four convince him Olivia will fall for him if he acts and dresses as a complete fool. They get him incarcerated and coax the town’s troubadour/fool Feste (Steve Tarry) to taunt him while captive. Lamberton plays Malvolio way over the top, and it is absolutely hilarious, creating far and away the best and funniest Malvolio I’ve ever seen.   

There are a few more side plots, but eventually, Antonia and Malvolio get released from their separate incarcerations, and both go off in a huff. Sebastian and Viola discover each other alive, which allows the latter to reveal her true gender. She agrees to marry the Duke, who finally understands his strong affection for this “man” he’s been calling Cesario. Olivia discovers her husband’s real name and his connection to Viola/Cesario, and in what must create the ultimate troublemaking couple, Sir Toby marries Maria.  

Of course, nothing is ever perfect, and there was one thing that rankled a bit. The director switched the male character Antonio to a female Antonia. The heterosexual Sebastian is supposed to be confused and repulsed by Antonio’s homosexual advances, but that reads differently when they come from a stunningly beautiful Antonia.  

Aiding the cast was a very adept support group. Blake York provided a simple and appropriate set, beautifully painted by Jen Ankrum and crew. Alex Smith (Sebastian in the cast) handled sound and Brett Carr designed lighting. Costumes by Marcie Haggerman were certainly interesting and attractive, though not always consistently in period, and sometimes marred by expansion panels in the back. Still, that’s the challenge of dressing a large cast with many changes in community theatre.

Admittedly, Shakespeare continues to scare some away. “It’s the language,” they say. “I won’t understand Elizabethan jargon.” Thanks to adroit directing and very skilled acting, you don’t need to worry about that. Through exaggerated body movement, facial contortions, and very expressive vocal work, all the actors make it abundantly clear what is being said. As one of the cast assures you in her blog, “We are doing the work FOR you.”

That said, go, and go fearlessly, to see Twelfth Night at Lakewood Playhouse. You’ll be treated to a top-to-bottom outstanding cast, an excellent, fast-paced production, and an evening of guaranteed laughter.  

Twelfth Night

Nov. 9 to Dec. 2, 2012

Lakewood Playhouse

http://www.lakewoodplayhouse.org/

The Unforgettable Nat 'King' Cole

Comfort Food

by Michael Dresdner

Once again, the redoubtable David Duvall, acting as musical arranger, director, and all around impresario, brought a divine musical experience to Centerstage. This time this musical genius took up the art of the late, great crooner Nat ‘King’ Cole.

Unfortunately, it was a one night only performance, but fear not. It’s part of a series, and I promise I’ll give you a shot at what’s coming at the end of this review. First, let me tell you what you missed, so you’ll be loath to miss another.

Sheldon Craig

The all Cole evening featured Sheldon Craig, a singer dripping with great talent, a beautiful voice, and a personality that rivaled both. A smoothly polished night club performer, he brought the best of the stage to a sold out audience; every one of the 234 seats was filled, and every one emptied into a standing ovation when he was done.

It was well deserved. Craig was a delight, lifting the room with bubbling, bouncing strains of classics like Route 66 and Papa Loves Mambo. During the infectious Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer, he even got his audience to sing along. Balancing it were the warm notes of songs like Mona Lisa and An Affair to Remember, where his lush voice wrapped around you like a wooly blanket.

The evening was, from start to finish, a pure delight, with Craig covering dozens of the great Cole songs those of us long enough in the tooth fondly remember. In between, there was the comforting patter of one who clearly loved his subject, and the pure enthusiasm of one who clearly loved what he was doing. So, too, did the audience.

Backing Craig was one of Duvall’s wonderful pickup groups. As usual, Duvall arranged, conducted and covered piano and other keyboards. With him were nine other multi-instrumentalists (Eric Brewster, Rick Cole, Dr. Ron Cole, Bud Jackson, Bill Branvold, Margaret Thorndill, Milo Petersen, Cary Black , Don Dietrich) who, in various iterations, offered a range of sounds from something akin to a small jazz group to the feel of a respectable pit orchestra. And behind them, a draped chiffon backdrop (Amy Silvera) acted as a lighting palette, changing colors to match the mood of each song.

Granted, you missed this one (it was sold out before the doors opened), but the good news is that Duvall will be bringing similar evenings, showcasing other vocal greats, to Alan Bryce’s wonderful Centerstage theatre in the near future.

Here’s what’s in store:

Believe in Yourself: The Lena Horne Songbook  -- with Stacie Calkins, Laurie Clothier and LaVon Hardison

Saturday, Feb. 16, 2013

It’s a Good Day for Miss Peggy Lee -- with Lindsey Larsen

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Reflections of The Supremes

Saturday, July 13, 2013

As before, these are ONE NIGHT ONLY, so take my advice and reserve your tickets early. Missing one is sad. Missing the others (now that I’ve warned you) would be a real pity.

The Unforgettable Nat King Cole

Centerstage

http://www.centerstagetheatre.com/

Saturday, Nov. 3, 2012

Night Watch at TLT

Does she or doesn’t she? Only her therapist knows for sure.

By Michael Dresdner

L to R, Nicole Locket, Gabriel McClellend, Jenifer Rifenbery 

A few minutes in, rumbling sound effects and a piercing scream let you know right off the bat that this will be a mystery thriller. Night Watch, a Lucille Fletcher play with decided Hitchcock overtones, has shown up at Tacoma Little Theatre just in time for Halloween.

The scream comes from wealthy heiress Elaine (Nicole Locket), who’s seen a bloody dead body in a chair through a briefly raised shade on the window of a vacant building across the way. No one else in the house sees anything; not her husband John (Gabriel McClellend), her visiting best friend Blanche (Jenifer Rifenbery), or the housekeeper Helga (Ziggy Devlan).

To complicate matters, Elaine is an emotionally fragile insomniac whose first husband, whom she says the aforementioned dead body resembled, died in a car wreck along with his illicit paramour. As is usually the case in this story genre, the police find no evidence of anything having happened, so by the time she sees a second body there, one resembling the blonde paramour, everyone, audience included, is starting to doubt her sanity.

As odd evidence mounts, like a blonde wig and a local who also looks like the dead man, we’re left wondering if she’s crazy, or is being played by her assumed friend and husband. Before long, her husband, aided by a psychiatrist who makes house calls, has convinced her to go to a mental hospital in Europe.

Through a sizeable chunk of both acts, the play lurches clumsily along like a sloppy jalopy with various secondary characters wandering through. Some will be key to the plot, but others seem merely to distract or add comic relief. Be patient, though, for ultimately the conclusion arrives with a very surprising twist that, while some might find a bit unsettling, I found to be quite satisfying.

Whether by accident, design, or direction, Locket and McClellend, both very skilled actors who’ve done superb and finely nuanced performances in the past, come off a bit two dimensional in this outing. That distracts from the inexorable building of tension that should be more gripping than it is. Rifenbery, by contrast, is quite convincing in a pleasantly understated performance as Elaine’s two-faced best friend.

John Pfaffe, a consistently reliable and skillful actor, plays the trench-coated police lieutenant Walker to a tee. Even more delightful is the flamboyant neighbor Appleby, played by another theatre mainstay, Joe Grant. He’s so compelling and likable that I wished he had more stage time.

The set, designed by Burton Yuen with props and set dressing by Becca Heines, deserves its own accolades. There’s obvious wealth behind the spare, modern 1970’s NYC apartment, which includes a perspective painted checkerboard floor, fine art on the walls, a Caldor mobile, an Eames chair, and a Mondrian inspired back wall skinned with a semi-transparent scrim. Throughout the play, the wall morphs and pulsates with a wide range of colors and lighting effects (Niclas R. Olson), adding both visual pleasure and mood.

Adding to the pleasant setting were the costumes (Francis Rankos), especially the iconic ones on Blanche and the hilariously outré ones worn by Appleby. The aforementioned sound effects (Joe Kelly) included eerie songs, street sounds, and the rest of the needed stage noises that bring realism to theatre.

If for you, October is just not complete without a foray into the eerie, you should add this play to your to Halloween to-do list.

Night Watch

Oct. 19 to Nov. 11, 2012

Tacoma Little Theatre

http://www.tacomalittletheatre.com/

The Turn of the Screw

Breath Taking

by Michael Dresdner

The Turn of the Screw at Centerstage pairs a deservedly famous, century-old psychological ghost story with surgically precise direction and an absolutely perfect cast in order to twist its audience through 90 riveting minutes of non-stop crescendo, leaving them dry-mouthed and spent. It’s a theatre experience you should not miss.

The story, if you don’t already know it, was written as a novella by Henry James in 1898, and has long been debated thanks to its delicious ambiguity. It’s liberally laced with overtones of religious and sexual repression, pedophilia, projection, fear, protective instinct, and the occult.  

A young woman is hired as governess for two children, by an uncle who wants nothing to do with them and quickly exits the picture. She finds a homebound mute girl, Flora, and her older brother, Miles, who was just permanently expelled from boarding school for something apparently too disgusting to discuss. They occupy a country estate tended by housekeeper Mrs. Grose, who piecemeal fills in some of its chilling past. Their last governess, Miss Jessel, and a hired hand, Peter Quint, had carried on a torrid and unconcealed sexual affair before both died under somewhat odd circumstances.

Soon the governess starts seeing the ghosts of Jessel and Quint, and becomes convinced they are either in league with, or worse, manipulating the children for some nefarious, possibly sexual, ends. The pace builds to a gripping climax with another death and the complete dissolution of the household, but there is much left for the audience to decide. Did the children, or Mrs. Grose, also see the ghosts? Who was manipulating whom? Or for that matter did the governess actually see the ghosts and earnestly try to protect the children from them, or was she simply descending into her own destructive madness?

Director Alan Bryce crafted this superbly as a one-act play with a gripping pace that never lets up, nor lets go of the audience. A simple set (Ben Baird), mood enhancing lighting (Amy Silveria), a pair of ideal costumes (Rachel Wilkie), and some ghostly special effects (Christina Barrigan) supply the seamless underpinnings. What brings it all home, though, was Bryce’s choice of just two sterling actors to cover all the parts.

The governess is played by Helen Harvester, beautifully and adroitly filling out a most demanding role. She goes from innocent and exhilarating anticipation through the entire gamut of emotions to fear, aggressive determination, and quite possibly, pure madness. Throughout, she keeps it completely convincing, and eminently compelling.

Terry Edward Moore plays all the other parts; a narrator, a doctor, and the uncle, who all appear only briefly, as well as the major roles of young Miles and Mrs. Grose. He does it without ever changing costume, slipping quickly and seamlessly in and out of the various roles with attendant physical gestures and voices. His performance is so convincing that you quickly forget what he’s wearing or what his true gender is. It’s the epitome of great acting. Like the governess, he, too, traverses a huge range of emotional states and character aspects, from coolly detached to cripplingly overwrought. The last character, Flora, is not played, but rather her presence is implied by the actions and words of the two real actors.

The Turn of the Screw is but the opening salvo of Centerstage’s new season, and if this is any example of the quality we can expect, it’s going to be an amazing theatrical year.

The Turn of the Screw

Centerstage

http://www.centerstagetheatre.com/

Oct. 6 through Oct. 31, 2012

Sherlock's Last Case

Not your father’s sleuth

by Michael Dresdner

Lakewood Playhouse often opens the season with a classic whodunit by Christie or another major writer. If you think that’s what they’re doing again this year, disabuse yourself of that notion. Sherlock’s Last Case, written not by A. Conan Doyle but by Charles Marowitz, is a far cry from a classic Sherlock Holmes story.

Yes, it contains deception and mystery, and offsets it with humor, mostly of the one-liner variety. But while it is overlaid upon the familiar Doyle characters and Baker Street set, the resulting play is not typical.

Where most mysteries dole out clues and let you discover them along with the detective, this one has almost none of that. In fact, except for the opening dialogue, a recap of a former case that includes a clear foreshadow of one of the play’s surprises, there is little true sleuthing to be found.

Instead, the mystery involves not a case per se, but a dark corner in the relationship between Sherlock Holmes (Steve Tarry), Dr. Watson (John Munn), and the specter of nemesis Moriarty in the guise of his offspring (Rachel Gamello/Mark Adam Rud). The small cast is rounded out nicely by the familiarly brusque Inspector Lestrade (Terence Artz) and ditzy housekeeper Mrs. Hudson (Cassie Cahill).  

The clues we’re given are for deciphering what is really going on in front of us, rather than to unravel a crime that has already taken place. And what is really going on is very unusual indeed, at least to diehard Baker Street fans.

That’s in large part because the author redefined both Watson and Holmes as very different people than the ones Doyle created, at least insofar as director Christian Carvajal has interpreted him. The agreeable, stable Watson is replaced by a seething, scheming factotum more resentful than convivial. Holmes, usually a coldly focused genius who blithely but benignly dismisses anyone not pertinent to the case at hand, becomes a more likeable fellow on the surface, but one saddled with a disturbing streak of petty vituperation.

The acting is what you’d expect from a very seasoned cast, and all cover their parts well. Tarry’s Holmes is charming and believable, while Munn’s Watson is stolidly consistent, except perhaps for a limp that hasn’t decided whether to come or go. For better or worse, both inject good bit of their own personas into their respective characters. Cahill creates a notable contrast to what one expects of a housekeeper, adroitly executing Mrs. Hudson as a delightfully batty, easily inebriated charmer.

The set, done in deep thrust, is lovely; an artful combination of the skills of designers Larry Hagerman and John Munn, props master Jeffrey Weaver, and set dresser Hally Phillips. They managed to create a Baker Street that is both comfortably familiar and brimming with delightful eye candy. Much of it does not get used as part of the play, so take time to drink it all in before the opening curtain. Blocking is done so that there’s no advantage or disadvantage in any of the three seating sections surrounding the action. No matter where you sit, you’ll see it all.

You’ll forgive me if I don’t outline the plot, since figuring out the plot itself is mostly where the mystery lies, and I don’t want to ruin it for you. Instead, I’ll just say that nothing is completely what it seems to be, but then, isn’t that true of all mysteries?

Sherlock’s Last Case

September 14^th to October 14^th, 2012

Lakewood Playhouse

http://www.lakewoodplayhouse.org/

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee/All in the Timing

Something familiar, something peculiar

by Michael Dresdner 

One cast, two days, seven plays. That’s what’s afoot in Federal Way this summer, and if you’re smart, you’ll hoof it down there and take advantage of it.

 

Centerstage, a bastion of great theatre, has teamed up with the drama department of Central Washington University to stage a Summer Theatre Festival reminiscent of classic summer stock, where one group of actors puts on different shows on alternating weeks or nights.

In this case, a combined cast made up of three Centerstage and five CWU actors stages a fairly familiar and well-loved musical comedy, The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and alternates it with a rather peculiar set of six, short, one act comedies, dubbed All in the Timing, from playwright David Ives. Based on the results, it’s pretty clear that CWU’s talent pool can easily hold its own with the very admirable Centerstage troupe.

From the Centerstage side comes DuWayne Andrews, Jr., Bob De Dea, and Caitlin Frances. If you’ve been lucky enough, or wise enough, to be a regular patron, you’ll recognize them from past successes. Hailing from CWU comes a similar group of young talents; Ben Sasnett, Sierra Tinhof, Brandon Walker, Alicia Renee Burch, Alex Smith, and Chauncey Trask. There were too many great characters created by this universally talented troupe to call out a string of high points. I’ll simply say that this is an outstanding ensemble, and you’d be crazy to miss it.

As is so often the case at Centerstage, the top notch actors were abetted, on both nights, by clever and simple scenery, spot on costumes and lighting, excellent directing and choreography, and in the case of Spelling Bee, the best musical support around. 

Spelling Bee, a popular and often performed musical, has a pair of quirky moderators proctoring a spelling bee peopled with a gaggle of peculiar and socially out-of-step savants, with a useless and suspect grief counselor in attendance. There’s a wealth of great music and dance numbers, both as a group and individually, as each of the off-center contestants exposes his or her odd back story and personal angst, and trots out an affectation or two used to make it through the competition. 

The musical teems with word plays, sight gags, and often masquerading as awkwardness, some fine dancing to go with the singing and acting. It’s a perfect vehicle for classic triple threat (singing, dancing, acting) performers, and this was, top to bottom, a perfect cast for it.

As usual, Centerstage pulled in an excellent production team consisting of director/choreographer Chris Nardine, musical director/keyboardist David Duvall (abetted by percussionist Troy Lund), set and lighting designer Christina Barrigan, and costume designer Jessica Pribble.

The next night I saw All in the Timing, a sextet of very funny, often very odd, comedies. All six were short but engaging, and the evening sped by.

 Sure Thing is the classic boy meets girl in a café, and each tries to say the right thing so that a date ensues. However, there’s a delightful twist. Each time one says the wrong, or less than ideal, thing, a service counter bell dings. That’s the signal, often used in improv, to back up a line or two and try again. The result is a hilarious sequence of alternate offshoots that, after enough mulligans, finally gets the couple together.

Words, Words, Words has the classic “three monkeys at typewriters will eventually create Hamlet” conjecture, but in this case, we hear the monkeys’ point of view as they caper about and expound on their take of the situation. The Universal Language is another boy meets girl story, but this time with an entrepreneur offering lessons in an Esperanto-type universal language. It’s wonderful wordplay, and yes, you’ll understand everything they say, even though it is not, strictly speaking, in English.

Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread takes a couple of simple sentences by four people in a bakery and deconstructs them into a collage of song, movement, and rhythm. In The Philadelphia, a man explains to his hapless friend that everything is going awry because he is stuck in a Philadelphia, a day were you can only get what you want by asking for the opposite. Variations on the Death of Trotsky, is just pure silliness, with a buffoonish Trotsky, a climbing axe firmly imbedded in his head, dying, over and over again in slightly different ways, after his wife clarifies events for him by reading about his death from an encyclopedia clearly written in the future.

Cynthia White did an excellent job of directing Timing, backed up by costume designer Lacy Halverson, and choreographer/stage manager Kate Gregory.

As an actor myself, I was impressed – make that amazed – that one cast can manage to do what amounts to seven totally different plays, one of them a full length musical, and create some 25 diverse characters, without getting them all mixed up. As a reviewer, I was simply delighted to be able to beat the heat in air conditioned comfort while I got to indulge in two back-to-back nights of non-stop fun.

Centerstage

http://www.centerstagetheatre.com/Events.aspx

The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

August 18^th and 19^th at 2 pm,

August 22^nd, 24^th and 25^th at 8 pm.

All in the Timing

August 18^th and 23^rd at 8 pm,

August 25^th and 26^th at 2 pm.

Love Letters

Sentimental Journey

Because each performance of Love Letters has a different cast, Alec Clayton and I decided to go on three different days and then share our reviews on one another's theatre blogs. Here’s my take; if you haven’t read it yet, Alec’s is below.

If you have read Alec’s review you know the basics. Yes, it is a “play” consisting of two people sitting side by side, reading 50 years worth of letters to one another recounting lives that are largely out of sync. And yes, it is often done, as it is at Lakewood, with revolving casts.

If you are lucky enough to see it with the right actors, (and I was,) you understand immediately why; it is hard to imagine a cast being able to make it through the powerful and heart-rending Act II more than once in a year, much less several times a week.

At its core, Love Letters is a long and winding road; a lifetime journey of two people who meet at age seven, and through letters and a few rare personal contacts, follow each others lives as they unfold in very different directions. Yet through it all, they remain bound by a thin, unbreakably strong, spider-silk strand of affection.  

Act one is laugh-out-loud funny; from the giddy silliness of two seven-year-olds passing notes through the awkward and exaggerated tweens and teens, and on into the confusing absurdity of early adulthood. The actors imperceptibly age, through voice and mannerisms, as they grow into their lives.

Act two takes us through their successes, challenges, and for one, desultory destruction, and by its end, leaves us emotionally drained and decidedly tear stained.

  

Granted, with different casts, each performance will be different, and some may be stronger, better, or differently skewed. I saw two, and they were, admittedly, much different. Clearly, there’s no way to review all nine, but I will say this about one pair. 

I’m one of those people who abhor frivolous standing ovations, but Sunday’s performance, a complete tour de force by the outstanding team of Micheal O’Hara and Sharry O’Hare, was one of those rare times it was truly earned. It made me glad to be a reviewer, proud to know the actors, and grateful to have experienced those two hours of my life.

In short, done well, this is powerful theatre, the true measure of what great theatre can be, a journey that will make you laugh, and will make you cry.

Alec is right. Go see it. It’s an experience worth having.

Alec Clayton’s review

Friday, Aug. 10^th 2012

Jen Davis and Alex Smith

There are many degrees and types of intimacy, but it is rare to have experienced a theatrical performance as intimate as Love Letters at Lakewood Playhouse. And what a sweet and original concept: nine performances of the same two-person play, each performance by a different couple who, off stage, are actual lovers, spouses or partners.

Since it opened off-Broadway in 1989 Love Letters has traditionally been performed with revolving casts. The unique twist to the Lakewood Playhouse presentation is that each of the performing couples met and fell in love while working in theater.
 As written by A.R. Gurney, the play is not to be “performed.” The couple is introduced. They sit side-by-side in chairs and read a series of letters to each other. Theater-goers will notice that no one is credited as director or costume designer. The only thing theatrical about the show is the lights come up at the beginning of each act and go down at the end. Otherwise it is just two characters reading letters written to one another over a lifetime. That sounds boring, but it is anything but. It is fascinating. It is one of the most personally engaging bits of theater I have ever witnessed.

The characters are Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, a boy and girl who met in the second grade and whose first correspondences were notes passed back and forth in school, and who continued a relationship, mostly through letters, throughout their lives. They grow up. They experience the pangs and hopes and disappointments of puberty and adolescence and young adulthood. They go their separate ways, both physically and psychologically, yet keep getting back together mostly through the letters as they build careers and family and grow into middle age and old age.

Alex Smith and Jen Davis were Andrew and Melissa opening night. Smith is a South Puget Sound favorite who has performed in a slew of plays in Olympia and Tacoma, most recently turning in an amazing performance in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at Lakewood Playhouse. He has endeared himself to audiences primarily through wild physical comedy. In this show he is much more restrained physically, but his facial expressions offer a look into the soul of Andrew Ladd. Davis is not as well known to me. This was my first time to see her on stage, and according to a curtain speech by Playhouse Artistic Director John Munn it may be the last for quite some time, because she is leaving the area soon for California. I’m glad I got to see her in this show. She absolutely becomes Melissa Gardner, frustrated artist and lover.

The amazing thing about Smith and Davis’s performance is that they each seem to thoroughly inhabit their characters yet remain most definitely themselves. Smith has a favorite hat that he wears everywhere he goes, and he wears it throughout this performance as if saying, “Look folks, no costume. It’s just me.” Having gotten to know him a little over the past year I felt like I was watching Alex Smith be himself, opening his own heart for the world to see inside and revealing that Andrew was as real as Alex. That is what we call acting. I suspect everyone in the audience opening night felt the same way — privileged to be invited into their lives. I’m sure the experience will be much the same at each succeeding performance as audiences are given a chance to see many of their favorite actors perform this show, so this is one show that would be good to see more than once because it promises to be different each time.

The actors are:
Friday, Aug. 10 -  Jen Davis and Alex Smith

Saturday, Aug. 11 - Jen Ankrum and Blake York
Sunday, Aug. 12 - Sharry O’Hare and Micheal O’Hara
 Friday, Aug. 17 - Stephanie and Jarod Nace
Saturday, Aug. 18 - Terri and Robert Puett
Sunday, Aug.19 - Aya and Randy Clark
Friday, Aug. 24 – Samantha Camp and Bruce Story
Saturday, Aug. 25 – Rachel and Alan Wilkie
Sunday, Aug. 26 – Bethany Bevier and Niclas R. Olson

Love Letters is sweet, poignant, funny and revealing. I not only recommend it, I recommend seeing as many performances as possible.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, through Aug. 26
WHERE: Lakewood Playhouse, 5729 Lakewood Towne Center Blvd., Lakewood
TICKETS: All tickets $15
INFORMATION: 253-588-0042, www.lakewoodplayhouse.org