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Weak script meets lackluster production at Ensemble
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By Fran Heller
Contributing Writer
Hope springs eternal for the hapless souls in Beth Henley’s seriocomic drama “The Lucky Spot,” a treacly tale of unrequited love, heartbreak and redemption among the lonely and the lost. It’s at Ensemble Theatre through Dec. 7.
Henley’s world is peopled with dysfunctional misfits, whose eccentricities fluctuate between the comic and the grotesque. The playwright draws her idiosyncratic characters with a compassion and understanding that is at once ludicrous and sympathetic.
The setting is the rural hamlet of Pigeon, La., in 1934, the height of the Depression. It’s also Christmas Eve. Reed Hooker, a gambling man, recently won an old farmhouse in a card game, which he has converted into The Lucky Spot Dance Hall. Helping him is Turnip, a hired hand, and 15-year-old Cassidy, an orphan whom Hooker also won in the poker game and has impregnated.
Cassidy wants Hooker to divorce his wife, marry her, and legitimize their unborn child. All hell breaks loose when Hooker’s wife, newly released from prison, returns to reclaim her man.
Like a soap opera, the convoluted plot takes more turns than a roadmap. Some of the clunky dialogue will make you wince, and the contrived, predictable ending is awash in sentimentality.
In director Licia Colombi’s lackluster production, the play’s weaknesses become even more glaring. Few of the actors fully plumb the humor and heartbreak of these oddball characters.
In a play in which nothing much happens, there’s lots of talk and sitting or standing around, which makes for some wooden staging. In several instances, while one character is soliloquizing, the others stand abreast, with hands on hips, an overused gesture, like a chorus line. It’s deadly.
Southern accents range from adequate to awful, and some actors are slow on the uptake. At times the play feels under-rehearsed.
Aly Geisler is a combination of vulnerability and pluck as naïve waif Cassidy Smith. Peter Ferry balances Reed Hooker’s gruffness and violent temper with a soft spot for his semi-literate ward.
Mary Jane Nottage grows a bit cloying as the needy Lacey Rollins, an over-the-hill taxi dancer with weak anklebones and a penchant for falling. Valerie Young brings much-needed energy to the production as Hooker’s estranged wife and former taxi dancer Sue Jack Tiller Hooker. Sue Jack’s stormy relationship with Hooker comes across in Young’s fully realized portrait.
Tensions escalate between husband and wife, culminating in a fight scene at the close of Act One that is poorly choreographed.
Ryan Shrewsberry is too stiff as Hooker’s employee Turnip Moss, a cross between dimwit and resident philosopher. Greg Del Torto is entirely convincing as the villainous Whitt Carmichael, who holds a lien on Reed’s property and a lust for Sue Jack. John Lynch fills the bill as the widower Sam, The Lucky Spot’s sole patron.
Pierre-Jacques Brault’s functional set makes no distinction between the interior dance hall and the outdoor area, which consists of an old crate and a leafless tree. The tree is on the same plane as the indoor jukebox.
S.Q. Campbell’s tacky costumes suit these down-and-out lowlifes. Walter Boswell’s Christmas Eve lighting emits a warm and fuzzy glow.
Henley was only 29 when she won the Tony and the Pulitzer for her first play, “Crimes of the Heart,” in 1981. None of her subsequent plays, including this one, ever matched her initial Broadway success.
Henley’s world is peopled with dysfunctional misfits, whose eccentricities fluctuate between the comic and the grotesque. The playwright draws her idiosyncratic characters with a compassion and understanding that is at once ludicrous and sympathetic.
The setting is the rural hamlet of Pigeon, La., in 1934, the height of the Depression. It’s also Christmas Eve. Reed Hooker, a gambling man, recently won an old farmhouse in a card game, which he has converted into The Lucky Spot Dance Hall. Helping him is Turnip, a hired hand, and 15-year-old Cassidy, an orphan whom Hooker also won in the poker game and has impregnated.
Cassidy wants Hooker to divorce his wife, marry her, and legitimize their unborn child. All hell breaks loose when Hooker’s wife, newly released from prison, returns to reclaim her man.
Like a soap opera, the convoluted plot takes more turns than a roadmap. Some of the clunky dialogue will make you wince, and the contrived, predictable ending is awash in sentimentality.
In director Licia Colombi’s lackluster production, the play’s weaknesses become even more glaring. Few of the actors fully plumb the humor and heartbreak of these oddball characters.
In a play in which nothing much happens, there’s lots of talk and sitting or standing around, which makes for some wooden staging. In several instances, while one character is soliloquizing, the others stand abreast, with hands on hips, an overused gesture, like a chorus line. It’s deadly.
Southern accents range from adequate to awful, and some actors are slow on the uptake. At times the play feels under-rehearsed.
Aly Geisler is a combination of vulnerability and pluck as naïve waif Cassidy Smith. Peter Ferry balances Reed Hooker’s gruffness and violent temper with a soft spot for his semi-literate ward.
Mary Jane Nottage grows a bit cloying as the needy Lacey Rollins, an over-the-hill taxi dancer with weak anklebones and a penchant for falling. Valerie Young brings much-needed energy to the production as Hooker’s estranged wife and former taxi dancer Sue Jack Tiller Hooker. Sue Jack’s stormy relationship with Hooker comes across in Young’s fully realized portrait.
Tensions escalate between husband and wife, culminating in a fight scene at the close of Act One that is poorly choreographed.
Ryan Shrewsberry is too stiff as Hooker’s employee Turnip Moss, a cross between dimwit and resident philosopher. Greg Del Torto is entirely convincing as the villainous Whitt Carmichael, who holds a lien on Reed’s property and a lust for Sue Jack. John Lynch fills the bill as the widower Sam, The Lucky Spot’s sole patron.
Pierre-Jacques Brault’s functional set makes no distinction between the interior dance hall and the outdoor area, which consists of an old crate and a leafless tree. The tree is on the same plane as the indoor jukebox.
S.Q. Campbell’s tacky costumes suit these down-and-out lowlifes. Walter Boswell’s Christmas Eve lighting emits a warm and fuzzy glow.
Henley was only 29 when she won the Tony and the Pulitzer for her first play, “Crimes of the Heart,” in 1981. None of her subsequent plays, including this one, ever matched her initial Broadway success.
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