Comic Potential
Comic Potential
By Alan Ayckbourn
Starring Garlen Maxon, Nathan Harry Bartman, Greg Suarez
Directed by George Colangelo
Seminole State College, Lake Mary, FL</strong>
It’s never a good sign when a comedy has more giggles on stage than in the audience. In this blazingly unfunny production, the first real audience response came in the second act with an awkward Tiger Woods joke, and the subsequent pie-in-the-face was a relief – yes, there would be actual laughs in this show, but watching the lead actress in her short skirt might be a better reason to drop by. So what’s going on here?
Sometime in the near future, robot actors called “Actoids” take over all the low paying parts in soaps and movies, and are held in low regard both as people and as machines. Chandler Tate (Bartman) is a faded film director with a drinking problem charged with cranking out an Actiod-based soap opera. Preprogrammed motion and dialog eliminate rehearsals, but today some of the Actoids are acting up – one of them keeps switching vowels and pretty Actiod Jacie 333 (Maxon) laughs at him. She has a nascent sense of humor, a skill in precious short supply in this lo-fi sci-epic. Adam Trainsmith (Suarez) is nephew to the network’s owner and eager to learn from Tate. Like everyone in the business, he has a treatment for a new comedy, and he eventually falls in love with her while bitchy network executive Carla Pepperbloom (Amy Baker) works to scotch the deal. Technical staff Prim Spring (Bonnie Anna Kerlin) and Trudi Floote (Crystal Ortiz) threaten to walk off the set. After a chase though a high end hotel and low end brothel, Adam teaches Jacie to read from a Gideon Bible and she decides that there really is something wrong with her, and she SHOULD be re-burned. Fair enough.
The big gap in this show is its singular lack of comic timing. Simple failure at acting would provide laughs of the wrong kind, but everyone is good enough to avoid that. They plow though jokes without those critical pauses, delays, and aside glances that make gags into humor. Bartman’s character bounces between strident and offended, and even though he’s pouring down the alcohol he never gets a decent drunken stumble or slurred misspeaking joke. Blaker’s Pepperbloom is just nasty and while the pie in her face really was nicely set up, it did not redeem any of her other lines. Part of the plot revolves around Adam’s concept of a comedy show based on Jacie, but when he talks though it you think “1926 melodrama” instead of “21st century screamer.” As Adam talked, I visualized Jack Warner waving a cigar at while growling “I like it, kid!” Unfortunately the audience didn’t have Mr. Warner’s visions. The cast didn’t seem to think much of it either.
Harsh as all that is, there were a few nice scenes. When Jacie is thrown out of the brothel by Turkey (Greg Larro) I was actually moved, and Alexander Flores as “Man in the Boutique / Restaurant” was suave and ironic, and had a gorgeous voice. Prim and Trudi weren’t all that funny, but they seemed to make a solid couple and allowed the script to float a few lesbian jokes that crucially leaned on the thought that the word “Lesbian” is intrinsically funny, like “Kangaroo” or “Turgid”. Maxon felt sympathetic and high minded as the ‘droid that felt bad about her internal programming bugs, but what she had was sex appeal, not ha-ha appeal.
If there’s potential in this comedy, it lies in the campy angle of a young man falling in love with a robot who lacks any of the girly parts necessary to consummate the relation. There’s a suitably wacky set of damaged humanity backing the concept, but the only part of this show I unreservedly enjoyed was Richard Harmon’s futuristic set. The inexplicable use of a ZZ Top sound track to tie up a British comedy didn’t help either, although Jacie did show her legs. Tate explains comedy in one scene as “Surprise and Anger”, and I agree – I was angry that “Comic Potential” never succeeded in surprising me, and judging by the comments heard at intermission, I was not alone.
For more information on the Seminole State College Theater program, please visit http://www.seminolestate.edu/arts/theatre/boxoffice.htm
