Charming play lacks depth
Experimental, playful and chameleonic, “Paradise Park Zoo” is more a happening than a play.
Available Light Theatre’s festive production of Savannah Reich’s surreal comedy displays the troupe’s versatility as well as its penchant for the quirky.
With welcome humor and realistic insight about co-dependent relationships, Reich establishes her basic metaphor: that we’re all animals in cages, unable to act even when the door opens.
Not much happens in the 110-minute threeact of short vignettes, live music, dancing, commentary, restaging and audience reseating (after two intermissions) in or around five zoo cages.
At the opening Thursday in a transformed black-box version of the Riffe Center’s At a glance
Available Light Theatre will present “Paradise Park Zoo” at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday and 8 p.m. May 18-20 in the Riffe Center’s Studio One Theatre, 77 S. High St. Tickets cost $20 in advance, with a limited number of “pay-what-you-want” tickets at the door. Call 614-558-7408, or visit www.avltheatre.com
Studio One Theatre, the talented ensemble played underwritten roles — animal and human — with charm and commitment.
As chimps, Ian Short’s needy Pancakes and Acacia Duncan’s resistant Jenny generate chemistry and amusing physicality.
The lionesses share a cuddly physicality, with Kim Garrison Hopcraft’s older Tatiana emotionally manipulating Elena Perantoni’s naïve Dee to stay with her.
Jordan Fehr and Audrey Rush assume the airs of a Noel Coward couple as two caged humans arguing over whether to escape.
The oddest couple: Michelle G. Lowrey’s talkative, hyperactive Red Panda and Adam Humphrey’s stoic (but hungry) Komodo Dragon.
The nimble rock band (Drew Eberly, Whitney Thomas Eads and Marc Conte) reinforce the energy and hip atmosphere.
Director Eleni Papaleonardos proves a capable ringmaster of the three-act circus, lively enough (aside from a long, suspenseful silence) to keep audiences entertained until nearly the end.
Yet Reich’s inchoate script lacks the structure and depth to fully dramatize its intriguing questions about freedom, change and stasis.