Larry B. Fox is a skilled and experienced playwright whose latest work, 'The Obituary I'm Dying to Write', is an unorthodox, bittersweet, engaging, and jocular look at 'The Subject No One Wants to Discuss'.
The play runs through May 6, 2018 at Pennsylvania Playhouse in Bethlehem.
Mr. Fox has teamed with the equally skilled and experienced director, Brian McDermott. to portray a somewhat rambling and often whimsical afternoon of tall tales and wistful reminiscence shared by the residents of a "county nursing home for the indigent".
Each in her and his turn shuffles to the Playhouse's unfortunate little prow known as 'down stage' and manages, through the magic of monologue, to transform it into, variously, a courtroom, a golf course, a hospital, a USMC training facility, and the United Nations General Assembly, among other wildly imaginative locations.
The staging is somewhat contradictive to farce, which a great deal of this play becomes at times--- when a district magistrate visibly grows cyanotic during trial, and the audience gasps and chuckles so loudly you can't hear a word that's being said, that's farce, folks.
I say contradictive because farce is synonymous with 'fast, furious, physical comedy', while 'Obituary' is anything but.
For one thing, the residents are hardly ambulatory. They spend ninety percent of the show seated at their cramped dining room tables, gumming their mystery meat, while each tick of the clock beckons them more insistently toward their graves.
The only body parts that move, besides their bowels, are their jowls.
But--- and this may be where the wit and wisdom of the play truly lie--- these sagging bags of bones, regret, and remorse only come alive when they are afforded, in life's elusive and fading spotlight, the simple opportunity to share their memories out loud for a few minutes each.
Anyway, the only true test of any kind of comedy, slow or rapid, young or old, short or long, is whether the audience laughs (smiles don't count).
'Obituary' easily passes that test.
A shout-out to the entire cast--- it's not easy to be funny sitting down. Special bows to Robert Torres who transformed himself from a hunched denizen of the poor house into a convincingly befuddled Marine recruit and back again; to the Lunt and Fontanne of the region, John Corl and Marcy Repp, who portrayed table mates more concerned with what was going than what was coming; to Susan Burnett, our favorite Canadian, who carried off the most complex and muddled of the many monologues; to Gary Boyer, who seems to have been born with comedic timing; to supporting player Jeanie Olah, who never fails to hold one's gaze, even when seated nearly out of sight in another of the Playhouse's many unfortunate corners.
But an especially special bow to Brian Keller, who played more roles than I could count, employing about every cheesy foreign and regional accent he could conjure, sometimes more than one in the same sentence, and whose physical transformations would have been sufficiently amusing even had he not spoken.
Congratulations on an original and engaging production of 'The Obituary I'm Dying to Write'.
Playing through Sunday May 6 at Pennsylvania Playhouse, 390 Illick's Mill Rd, Bethlehem, PA 18017
For tickets, call (610) 865-1192 or visit http://www.paplayhouse.org/