8/4/2024 MAYTAG VIRGIN CenterStage North
WHY ASK WHY?
(Sloth Alert – I wrote an appreciation of this play way back in 2018 after Aurora Theatre’s production. Large segments of this – the template stuff about the play itself – are fully copy-and-pasted here. For the record, I still like this script and have in fact ordered a copy from [The Internet].)
So, I have to confess, I am a sucker for a good Romantic Comedy. I love witnessing the course of true love failing to run smooth (until, of course, it does). I love watching quirky characters fall into a relationship that, by all reasonable standards, should not work (until, of course, it does). And I especially love witnessing ALL the resources of a small-scale theatre be marshalled into the service of telling the story of two un-extraordinary people who slowly find the extraordinary in each other.
So, here’s Maytag Virgin, Audrey Cefaly's little romance that finds itself on CenterStage North’s Art Place Black Box in a production that delights, moves, and satisfies ALL my expectations for a perfectly tuned Romantic Comedy.
Jack Key has moved next door to Lizzy Nash. Both are teachers at their small-town high school, but she is on an extended sabbatical, due to the accidental death of her husband. He is, well, mostly silent. Throughout the course of a full year, they squabble, they bond, they fall into the rain-drenched depths of despair, they fall into the moonshine-drenched delirium of drunken confession, and their disparate personality "spikes" eventually mesh into a relationship that will, against all odds (if not expectations) lead to an inevitable final embrace. Or at least to a 2:00 A.M. summer walk.
This is a production that scores in almost every aspect -- writing, acting, directing, design. It is a script filled with clever character-specific dialogue, a script that takes its time exploring all the edges of these two people, a script filled with southern charm and humor. Meghan Claar and Hunter Showalter totally inhabit these characters, bringing out their considerable appeal without denying them human failings and quirky eccentricities (she has never used a clothes dryer, an oddity Ms. Claar makes completely believable. He insists on keeping his dryer on his back porch -- again, odd but credible). If some of their dialog is lost in the cacophony of this venue’s A.C. unit, their subtext and nuanced performances make the meaning clear, if not the specific words.
Cathe Payne and Angie Short have given us a simple set that focuses on their houses and the gulf between them (literal and metaphorical). If the generic lights by the anonymous Cobb County minion is lacking in time-of-day specificity and needed effects – a thunderstorm at the end of Act I is especially disappointing – there are some moments that delight, especially the sudden appearance of stars for an all-night picnic.
The real appeal of this piece is watching two characters who have given up on happiness – one is still in grief, the other in full-blown guilt about lack of grief – stumble their way into friendship BEFORE discovering a deeper connection that may (just may) have been there all along. Ms. Claar and Mr. Showalter have plenty of chemistry, and I for one rooted for them from the start. And to be honest, a conclusion in which mere friendship was the “happy ending” would have been just as satisfying as the more romantic one we’re given.
As I did when I saw this play 6 years ago, I fell in love with Lizzie and "Mr. Key." I found their story compelling and attractive. Director Julie Taliaferro has guided her cast into an almost musical duet of melody and harmony, of emotional call and response. And I believe Ms. Cefaly has created a confection that makes the thrilling discovery that the world is a better place with this couple together. Not to mention putting a final nail in the coffin of that mindset that couples have to be compatible to "work."**
And it just makes sense that it takes them a full year to discover this for themselves.
-- Brad Rudy (BKRudy@aol.com #CenterStageNorth #MaytagVirgin)
https://www.facebook.com/CenterStageNorthTheatre/
** Confession time (and I hope my patient spouse will forgive me for sharing this. Again.) -- I am a liberal atheist baby-boomer married to a conservative Catholic Gen-Xer. "On paper" we should not work. And yet, here we are, enjoying our 26th year of marriage, good times far outweighing the rare spats and tantrums (and believe me, I can throw a tantrum like a toddler). It's easy to say we "work" because we share a love and devotion to theatre, or that our differences are so extreme they remain unspoken, undiscussed, or that we simply enjoy each other's company and make each other laugh almost every day. The truth is probably more complex, bound up in the human heart and mind, so we fall back on a "Why ask Why?" attitude towards our marriage. Which is to say, when I see Romantic Dramedies centered on couples that manage to mesh in spite of massive incompatibility, it simply reaffirms all the choices we seem to have made to get to this point.