I don't believe it's possible to attend a theater event at Shawnee Playhouse and have a bad experience.
And that would be especially true if the event you attended was 'The Two Georgias', currently in production there.
Guided blithely by playwright Brian McDermott's droll script, the genial Worthington Players, Shawnee's estimable off-season non-musical theater company, has managed to cobble together enough charming performances and visual references to re-create one of America's most colorful eras in terms of banter, cocktails, and fashion.
The show's playbill asks that you believe you're peeking into a dressing room of a Boston preview theater, circa 1958, during the pre-Broadway run of a musical adaptation of the German legend of Faust, the scholar who traded his eternal soul to the Prince of Darkness in return for magical powers and the satisfaction of his unbridled carnal desires. (I have to say--- and it's relevant to 'The Two Georgias'--- that I never thought Mephistopheles was getting much in return for all the concessions he made, given the absence of any evidence that Faust even HAD a soul to begin with.)
The show opens in high gear, as the formidable Midge McClosky, executive director of the Playhouse, and playing one of the title roles, Georgia Andrews, enters so thickly girdled in petticoats and with such boundless comedic determination that you almost forget her character is on crutches much of the show.
From the outset, the play belongs to McClosky, and she is so clearly capable and immediately likeable in her role that you never lack confidence that the next two-and-a-half hours will be well invested.
Her crutches are crucial indicators of a lot of things, not least of which is that Ms Andrews, a long-standing and much celebrated leading lady, has grown a bit weary of treading the boards and longs for something, or someone, to bring greater affection and fulfillment to her life.
Until that manifests, of course, she self-medicates heavily from the well-stocked drink cart that figures prominently in every actor's dressing room, real or imagined.
Her understudy, Georgie Millayne, is quite the opposite sort of woman, strutting unfettered around the stage in various states of undress, endlessly ambitious in her career and considerably younger than the leading lady whose role and fame she covets.
Georgie is played with almost shameless appeal by Pocono Mountain East High School senior Abby Witt who displays a grasp of backstage politics that belies her tender years.
Ms Witt is taxed with portraying a nearly talentless aspiring diva while at the same time making us actually care about what happens to her. And she pulls it off masterfully, somehow convincing us that her whiny, paper-thin character in the early scenes of the show manages to evolve into a woman of substance and artistic potential by final curtain.
You should know that, one after another, everyone who ventures upon the stage in 'The Two Georgias' is equally welcome and delightful.
I was particularly struck by both the resonant voice and formidable physical presence of Thomas Weyburn in the role of impresario Graydon Ross. His deliberate choosing of words before he speaks, the measured but authoritative manner with which he crosses the stage and engages his fellow theater denizens, lend remarkable authenticity to the setting, the era, and the play's conceits.
McDermott's play is both a celebration of language and a concession to language's insufficiencies.
Most of what leads McDermott's characters down slippery paths lies in their inability to express themselves honestly and clearly to one another.
Thus, they turn to darker forces for help they don't really need and that can't really change their lives in meaningful ways.
In the end this play becomes a parlor game between a roomful of more or less talented individuals whose personal ambitions sometimes mask and subvert the genuine caring and affection they're capable of feeling for one another.
Like shipmates.
The language is appropriately salty, but they don't charge extra for it. And even if you don't like it, you'll still get a warm handshake and a "Thank you for coming" from each of the cast members lined up in the lobby following the show to see you off.
Shawnee Playhouse's production of 'The Two Georgias' is live, non-musical, non-children's, non-professional theater, and the richness of the experience it affords you should not to be taken for granted; I can't think of another place in our region where that can be found.
The Playhouse building itself has withstood two World Wars, a Great Depression, and 19 US Presidents. And it proudly shows every one of its 112 years, from its muddy parking lot, the steep front steps leading to a drafty, but intimate lobby, the antiquated restrooms downstairs, the balcony at the rear of the house, to its echoing stage elevated about three feet above the audience.
However, there is something so eternally warm and inviting about finding yourself in that village, entering that structure, unfolding your program, and allowing yourself to be embraced by what in this instance seemed a slightly under-rehearsed Worthington Players for a few gentle hours, that you really can't have any idea what I'm talking about unless you venture there and experience it yourself.
'The Two Georgias' runs through February 7, 2016. For information, please call 370-421-5093, or visit www.The Shawnee Playhouse.com
Shawnee Playhouse is a thirty-to-forty minute drive from Airport Road in Allentown, PA.