Beyond Therapy
Beyond Therapy
By Christopher Durang
Directed by Wade Hair
Starring Barry Wright and Dina Najjar
Breakthrough Theatre, Winter Park, FL
It may be a bit dated and more than bit pan-sexist, but this is a damn funny show. There are clues to date it; “Shaun Cassidy” might just be a trigger word if you’re old enough. Frail Prudence (Najjar) sits on her therapist’s (Craig Raymond) couch and whines about life. He, in turn, seduces her, but he shoot pretty quick and he’s not a satisfying counselor or lover. She answers a lonely hearts notice in the paper (another ancient product) and meets Bruce (Wright) at the local existentialist restaurant. There he proposes, but not until he causally reveals he’s living with a guy named Bob (Jonathin “Yes, I spell it that way” Vazquez). Bob has even worse counselor; that’s the surrealist Jungian Charlotte (Kristin Pringle-Marksbury). She has trouble with nouns and is relentlessly positive; it’s enough to drive people to shoot each other. Bob takes the initiative, Stuart takes the dive, and Prudence does the least prudent thing she can. It’s a typical Durang piece: It’s unique in all the usual ways.
While Wright and Vazquez make a very convincing couple, it’s Pringle-Marksbury who steals the show with her tenuous grip on nouns and reality. Ms. Najjar has a wonderfully angst filled life, and Mr. Raymond is so sleaze filled he could run for office, and win. Vazquez is surprisingly strong as an actor and a character; so often the “other gay” is little more than a cardboard cutout. Wright’s Bruce oozes energy and precision; as a seducer he’s the most comic of all the funny people on stage. Ms. Najjar takes her buffeting with good grace and her search for love is always destined to take her places she dare not go. While Breakthrough is best known for happy and sometimes precious productions, this is solid, well plotted journey into a world of non-sequiturs and constant self-reference.
For more information, please visit http://www.breakthroughtheatre.com or look them up on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Breakthrough-Theatre-of-Winter-Park/
