Whats not to like about a show whose female lead and stage director are the most well-liked and seasoned theatrical couple in the region, Vicky and Ralph Montesano'
Whats not to like about taking a graduate-level class on the art of "stage listening" by four master practitioners, Mike Febbo, Syd Stauffer, Jen Kurtz, and Becki Wenhold'
Whats not to like about a comedy set in a bar filled with grumpy, retired steelworkers'
Whats not to like about characters speaking in accents from fifty states and at least that many TV sitcoms'
Whats not to like about a show with an upstage window curtain that can be raised at just the right moment to reveal the foot-lighted and breathtaking remains of Bethlehems towering, fossilized steel stacks'
Whats not to like about a show that asks probing questions and seeks serious answers about life, death, and taxes'
Whats not to like¦'
"But Im Still Slighly Confused", a bold new comedy with a brazenly personal pronoun in the title, is surprisingly mean-spirited, depicting struggling, working class stiffs not so much as victims of corporate greed, but more as patsies of the New Deal, labor unions, and a failure to be born into a superior bloodline.
In that vein, the actors, portraying patrons of a Bethlehem pub, are forced by this highly literate and ambitious script into characterizations so broad they literally couldnt fit on the tiny stage.
Jack Armstrong, as a reminiscing ex-steelworker, channels Norton, the beloved sanitation engineer in the old Honeymooners TV comedy, quite evocatively. For long minutes on end, with a dead-on Art Carney impression, he poses one perfectly reasonable, sometimes funny, and often sad rhetorical question after another about why people behave the ways they do and why things in his world havent worked out the way he had thought and hoped they would.
The bartender, played superbly by Gary Boyer, has no reservations, however, about coming up with an answer for each and every one of Armstrongs seemingly endless list of laments.
And, for all its piety, that interplay is pretty engaging for a little while.
Soon, however, the scrunched noses, the rolling eyes, the furrowed brows begin to wear heavily on any chance of serious discovery the audience may have hoped for with this play; too many he donts in place of he doesnts; too many inferences that the people receiving our once great societys benefits are the ones most responsible for its decline.
A lovely, widowed, carriage-trade parishioner sitting beside me, who entertained me throughout the play with a running discourse on the history of the author, on her own personal family saga that reaches back to Bethlehems early days, on a love of proper grammer, and on a determination to be buried in the family plot in Nisky Hill Cemetary, summed up the show by telling me this wasnt a play. She said it was, instead, a slap in the face of the people who worked at the Steel, and it would probably be better read than performed.
Still, she chuckled spontaneously with punctuated equilibrium throughout the play, as did a great many of the nearly sold out house”at least the ones who could see and hear.
I was told that nine actors were in place on stage when the lights when on at top-of-show. I could see but four of them. Im 510" in warm weather, and I sit up straight in class. Still, from the fourth row of chairs, I couldnt see the actors below their chins. So, I couldnt tell you anything about costumes.
And from the first and funny but faint words out of Ms Montesanos mouth, when the women to either side of me began muttering, "I cant hear her", I knew the room was a black hole for sound.
The Blast Furnace Room is an unfortunate place to try to stage this play, with music not so much trickling in as it was gushing from the various performance and movie venues below.
I need to point out that while the entire ensemble showed considerable stage skills, three performers grabbed my attention long before they ever spoke and never once let go of it, although none of them got enough playing time. The lovely Kurtz, the reptilian Febbo, and Stauffer whose facial expressions were so lethal they should require a carry permit, gave a clinic on playing the game both with and without the ball.
Lets be fair to the efforts behind But Im Still Slightly Confused. A genuine and not unschooled sense of humor resides in this play.
A funeral service interrupted by cell phone ring tones bridged all classes; a grieving friend (Mickey Brown doing a pretty fair Bob Newhart send-up) trying to take a grocery order from his wife, all under the lazer-beam gaze of the eulogizing priest, was comically impeccable.
A vignette involving two widely separated tiers of hockey fans from even more distinctly separate socio-economic backgrounds, had everything you could possibly want from a farcical perspective: hockey is a very funny game, beginning with its name, and skating on down through its uniforms, helmets, crooked sticks, and something called a puck; beer, popcorn, and jujubes are always rich comic fodder; and sports fans are probably the only surviving members of the homo erectus species.
That scene had it all. But, all apparently wasnt good enough, and that moment, along with several others in the show, sank beneath the weight of an unfortunate and persistent bent for the scatological, the urinary, and the puerile (read: "takes a dump", "whizz", and "dick").
Yes, I tell you honestly that each succeeding reference to the bodily functions of horses and hockey fans got laughs. But, not a one of us can deny their cheapness. A show with the ambitions and literacy this one has neednt settle for middle-school humor.
Throughout the night, a striking looking, pointedly reticent, and stone-faced gentleman sat patiently at the stages bar. The audience never questioned "if" he would speak, but "when". And at the moment in the closing scene he finally opened his mouth, the character, played well by the shows author, Larry Fox, actually did what every playwright who has ever lived desperately wishes to do, but wisely never does: he told us what his play was all about.
And while no one can question his sincerity, his integrity, or his verbal skills, one must surely ask him, "Why'"
Boyer skillfully portrayed perhaps the worst beertender in the entire history of public houses. He rarely stood behind the bar, choosing to sit most of the night; Ive never in my entire life seen a bartender sit behind a bar. They dont even HAVE chairs behind bars. He never served drinks, wiped the counter top, cleared the tables. I didnt see him refilling bowls with pretzels and salted peanuts.
I am not for one second criticizing Mr. Boyer; I enjoyed him every time he spoke. However, I do think the failure to create a pub atmosphere was fairly representative of a lack of believability that permeated this show.And a play is nothing if' its component parts aren't to be believed.
But, whats not to like about a play whose very title gives the reviewer an irresistible zinger without having to change one word of it'
"But I'm Still Slightly Confused," plays 7 p.m. March 14, 20, and 21 and 3 p.m. March 15 and 22 in the Blast Furnace Room, ArtsQuest Center, SteelStacks, 101 Founders Way, Bethlehem.
Tickets are $20. For information, contact steelstacks.org or call 610-332-1300.