Community Archived Reviews Escape From Happiness
KDHX Theatre Review - Escape From Happiness
Muddy Waters Theatre Company
Reviewed by Robert Boyd
I’m Robert Boyd with a review of a sparkling production of George F. Walker’s play Escape From Happiness at Muddy Waters Theater Company. The fledgling company has hit the ground running in this first production and looks set to become a major part of the burgeoning St. Louis theater scene.
Canadian Playwright George F. Walker is part Sam Shepherd, part Three Stooges, and part Harold Pinter, a slapstick comedian whose lines are sometimes uncannily penetrating epigrams and whose characters are definitely from the far end of the dial, in terms of normality. His work is described by director Cameron Ulrich as irreverent and low, but it is both bawdy and witty, both irreverent and – in a bizarre way – spiritual. Escape From Happiness is a crude comedy, often violent, which turns out to have a sentimental core and is at the same time a pretty good whodunit mystery. The story covers a couple of days in the life of a working-class family struggling with what seem at first to be the predictable difficulties, including a senile father, a mother for whom the term “dingbat” seems a perfect fit, a son-in-law with shady connections, and three daughters who can’t get along with each other or with the father. Two quarrelling cops and two crooks who could have stepped directly out of a Monty Python skit round out the cast. But, in Walker’s world, very little is what it seems, and by the end of the evening the audience finds itself wrenched out of complacency, having been dragged through a series of unmaskings and revelations into a denouement which is as dramatically effective as it is slick. For “low” comedy, that is, this is a meticulously plotted story, and the characterizations are remarkably sophisticated.
This is, as most things at the emerging Soulard Theater have been, something less than a minimalist production, done in the round, with only the most essential lighting and a single set holding a battered kitchen table and chairs. But what is lacking in externals is more than made up for by the actors. I hadn’t seen the wonderful Lynne Rathbone in far too long, but she and the part of the mother seem made for each other. In keeping with the shape-shifting nature of Walker’s characters, her first scenes are somewhere between curious and weird, but by the time she speaks the play’s key lines about happiness in the second act, it has become clear that both the character and the acting which brings that character alive are nothing short of brilliant. Chuck Lavazzi and Torrey Roussin, as the father and son-in-law, and Jenny Losapio, as one of the cops, handle similarly demanding transitions with aplomb. Company co-founder Patty Ulrich is scarily convincing as the lawyer daughter with a violent streak and Pamela Reckamp, as her ditzy sister, does a good job with a very difficult character. Brian Douglas and Robert Ashton as the hapless crooks, Julie Stockhausen as the whiny youngest sister, and Joe Dees as the relatively normal cop round out a very strong cast.
Credit director Cameron Uhlrich, though, with gluing everything together and bringing out the full power of Walker’s impressive script. Muddy Waters has scheduled two more productions of Walker’s work over the next few months; I look forward to seeing them. Meanwhile, I heartily recommend this production of Escape From Happiness, which will run through next weekend [February 12 - 14, 2004] at the Soulard Theater on South 9th street; call 314-540-7831 for ticket information.
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