Sarah Killough and  Ellen Adair              photos by Colin Shepherd

 

                     by  Eugene Paul

 

New  plays, new theatre companies, continue  to seek the limelight from one end of the country to the other, nowhere more generously than on New York City’s turf. Its name trailing martially bold Shakespearean allusions, the Happy Few Theatre Company, producers of the goodbye room have mounted a frugally spare second production – it’s that new a company – rich in acting talent, promising in writing talent, and still searching for an artistic direction beyond showing off their skills.  But, it’s early days.  They’re gifted and spunky and know they have miles to go before they’ve kept their promises.

 

What we are witnessing in their new play, the goodbye room, written and directed by Eric Glide, gives every cast member plenty of space to shine, which is not surprising:  Glide is  co-artistic director of the company. We are also witnessing the grit and determination it takes to  get themselves and their play before the public,  and that lends their effort  a kind of desperate glint which adds a bonus luster to the show, because their presentation is of a well mined genre: the family mourning the passing of a  beloved member. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were two or three or more similarly themed plays during this season alone.

 

Playwright Glide allows director Glide to move his actors purposefully, although director Glide hasn’t been strict enough with playwright Glide, an all but institutional failing among young director/playwrights. They do like their own words, keeping more of them than necessary or helpful to the overall production.  And actors are not known for telling a director to abbreviate their moments on the stage by cutting lines, especially since the author knows how to write dialogue.

 

Bex (lovely Ellen Adair, also known as Becky, Rebecca, and Hey!

depending on the circumstances, arrives late at night at her old home in a compound of  distresses and guilt: guilty because her mother has died suddenly, unexpectedly and she wasn’t around, guilty because she wasn’t around  to help her sister cope,  abysmally late because of air traffic delays, storms,  and getting here has been a nightmare. 

 

Michael Selkirk

 

Edgar, her father (spot on Michael Selkirk), himself in  roughly contained distress, ineffectually tries to comfort her to not much avail.  Especially since sister Maggie (vivid Sarah Killough), whose local business, real estate broker, is in demanding Spring uptick keeping her on edge, is additionally annoyed with not being able to mourn properly by having to deal with everything a funeral entails.

 

To top it all, the sisters have not seen each other in several years and their father is keenly aware of what they’re feeling while he struggles to blur his own sense of loss after four decades of marriage. Still, she died too soon, too suddenly after four decades of marriage, without warning.  Nobody had a chance to say goodbye.

 

Craig Wesley Divino

 

Including Sebastian (ever so good Craig Wesley Divino) who, with no family of his own, gravitated to the mothering he got from the girl’s mother, and the staunch camaraderie he felt with Edgar, the family warmth he never had growing up.  Sebastian was always there, over the years, always helping out.  And yearning after Maggie, which never happened.  Bex had gone to Chicago to make her own life, got married, but nobody was as yet fulfilled.  Now, Sebastian is here and Maggie cannot stand his presence.  Why?  Sebastian is reeking with guilt.  What happened?

 

If this all sounds like one or more of the soap operas you’ve indulged in – or avoided – you are perfectly right and if the actors weren’t so darn good you might feel the urge to depart but you’ve got to stay to find out what happened, don’t you? And what else may happen?  And what about those eery, spooky  moments when Mom’s old record player started playing one of her favorite songs when it was supposed to be broken?  And the lights?  What were they doing? It would be a spoiler to tell you.

 

Well, just this once, just a bit:  you should know that the burden of finding out what has happened and what is to happen has pretty much fallen on you, because playwright Gilde has not found his final curtain and the company has a humdinger of a time, girls’ drunk scene and all, getting to the ending.  Well, not quite an ending.  Stopping point? I am really glad, though,  that nobody made too much of a thing about the frozen peas.

                                                         

the goodbye room. At Shetler Studios, 244 West 54^th Street. Tickets: $18, $15 students. 917-251-7789.  90 min.  Thru Mar 19