Playcrafters of Skippack's website describes the setting of its current production, 'Dr. Cook's Garden', as "The perfect small town, with a beloved elderly family physician", and asks, "But, is the town too perfect'"
Playwright/novelist Ira Levin built a remarkable career around introducing a seemingly perfect person, place, or thing, and then watching us twist and struggle helplessly, hopelessly to escape when we realize too late the trap he's laid for us--- the perfect small town (The Stepford Wives), the perfect neighbors (Rosemary's Baby), the perfect crime (Deathtrap), the perfect clone (The Boys from Brazil), the perfect society (This Perfect Day), the perfect skyscraper (Sliver), the perfect boyfriend (A Kiss Before Dying), the perfectly kind old couple (Veronica's Room).
Deeply couched in eastern Montgomery County. a scant few miles west of Lansdale, The Village of Skippack, its main thoroughfare lined with quaint shops, cozy restaurants, and neatly manicured shrubs, is almost too clean, cordial, and contained quite to be trusted.
Free parking' Where are the meter monsters' Where are the speed-traps' What's the catch'
In that vein, I can't imagine a more perfect place for this curious, but flawed, tale of a house-calling doctor and his mission to remove people he perceives as imperfect from the world. The play is set in Vermont, and Skippack could be uprooted and dropped in the middle of the Green Mountains without arousing suspicions.
It's pretty hard to dislike anything you might attend in Playcrafters' semi-circular workspace, embraced by rising rows of comfortable seats, and painstakingly constructed, like a ship in a bottle, in the loft of a converted bank barn on Store Road and just a few hundred feet north of W. Skippack Pike, the town's main drag.
We watched the show from a couple of different seats--- threatening weather had almost certainly dampened attendance, although just slightly--- and I'm comfortable telling you that this is about as user friendly a space (aside from the fact that you will be climbing either a ramp or stairs to get there) as any theater's within driving distance.
The actors hit the ground running, as one might expect in a show directed by Suki, a young woman who has built a well-earned reputation for courage and creativity in a region that seems to span the County's community theater companies.
Stephen Kuerschner, in the title role--- playing the Doctor, not the Garden---, by chance or design resembles a Dr. Frankenstein (or the late comedian Larry Fine) whose grand social experiment, in this instance, involves not constructing a living creature from the dead, but from making a whole lot more dead.
He's on a crusade of one, you see, to make a better world by eliminating those among us who are suffering or who are disabled in some way and unable to contribute to the societal standards the Doctor has set for those in his town.
Not to mention a few eliminations of those who might link the Doctor to all the unexplained new graves.
Scary thought, down to one's toes!
Ryan Henzes, a young gentleman who at first glance seems overwhelmed by his challenging co-leading role, soon gives lie to that impression and delivers a convincing, compelling, and thoroughly believable performance mixing suspicion, shock, and resolve as a newly minted and somewhat ingenuous medical school grad who has returned to assist his old mentor, Dr. Cook.
Henzes displays the gift of allowing his physicality to speak for him as clearly as his lines. He moves economically, but with power and grace. And when he's not talking, he's listening, something many actors in the world, at all levels, are unable to do.
The supporting cast does its jobs solidly, the set is inviting, and the lighting pulls your eyes where they're supposed to go.
I would suggest that the show's deficiencies are all of the script, that Mr. Levin's once riveting obsession with the perils of striving for Perfect had run its course before he wrote 'Dr. Cook's Garden'. The 'reveal' comes so early, structurally, that we never get close enough to Levin's famous spider's web to get caught up in it.
At the same time, I will say that the company made an earnest and largely successful bid to compensate for that shortcoming.
The show continues through September 1, 2018.
Playcrafters of Skippack is located at 2011 Store Rd, Skippack, PA 19474.
For information, call (610) 584-4005 or visit www.playcrafters.org