FLASHY: Kristan Raymond Robinson as Mac. |
| Three Viewings | by Jeffrey Hatcher | Directed by Kent Stevens | Produced by Harbor Light Stage, at the Saint Aspinquid Masonic Lodge, 101 Long Sands Rd, York | through November 2 | Hatcher will attend on October 26 | 207.439.5769 |
Harbor Light Stage, the adventurous new Kittery-based theater company, loves to play with its locations. Artistic director Kent Stephens staged the company’s first main stage show, the cosmic high school-reunion comedy The Pavilion, in a 19th-century barn on Kittery Point (see “Back to School,” by Megan Grumbling, May 23). Now, the company has set up residence in York’s Saint Aspinquid Masonic Lodge. There, Harbor Light mounts Three Viewings, a triptych of monologues by acclaimed playwright and screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher. Set in a funeral parlor of a small mid-western town, Hatcher’s they deal with matters of death and life.
Although the company doesn’t stage Three Viewings in an actual funeral parlor, the Lodge’s ceremonial room — smartly souped up with stage lights and lavish floral arrangements on white columns — has more than enough gravitas and David Lynchy atmospherics to suffice. At the center of the room is a vast and dramatic inlay of white and black marble tile. The production uses this tiled area as a thrust; the audience, surrounding it on three sides, watches from hand-carved antique benches and thrones. Deep upstage, between the columns, is a mustard-yellow velvet loveseat draped with a wine-colored chenille throw — another perfectly struck tone in a sparse and sophisticated set. In this spacious room, which somehow manages to feel both austere and lurid, we spend time with the musings of Emil (Mark Cohen), Mac (Kristan Raymond Robinson), and Virginia (Norma Fire), each of whom performs one of the play’s three “Viewings.”
The first of these is “Tell-Tale,” in which, with some clever and mordant riffs on Poe, longtime funeral director Emil confesses his secret feelings for raven-haired real-estate maven Tessy, whom he sneaks into exclusive funerals, so that she might ply her trade. Next, in “Thief of Tears,” we meet Mac (née Jane), a fast-talking, edgy, glamorous transplant to LA whose special talent is relieving corpses of their jewels. The death of her rich grandmother has brought her back to the mid-west, and with a certain shiny something in mind. Finally, “13 Things About Ed Carpolotti” brings out Virginia, Ed’s dignified but wise-cracking new widow. When Ed’s colleagues start lining up with big debts, Virginia finds that she has to negotiate a lot more than grief.
Each of the three monologues ranges across wide emotional terrain, from clever witticisms to the baring of souls, and all three actors prove graceful navigators. You can’t help but smile at the sweet exuberance of Cohen’s Emil (“She laughs!” he exults, as he recalls having said something that amuses his love), but Cohen is equally adept at bringing Emil down to measured sadness, bitterness, and even a wise restraint. Like Cohen, all three performers budget the tearful stuff, and so are in keeping with Hatcher’s often wickedly funny script. All three roles are also written with generous helpings of mimicry as part of the storytelling, and the actors positively feast on it. Particularly entertaining is Virginia impersonating Dino, her husband’s mobster debtor, whose turns of phrase are an absolute gas in the mouth of a respectable gray-haired lady.
