Cultural differences dished up during lunchtime at rural diner

Two college professors wander into a small-town diner and are served a heaping helping of attitude in the play “Counter/Top.”

The show will open Friday at MadLab Theatre.

“I love the characters. It’s a wonderful slice of life, like Mayberry in ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’” director Meg Mateer said. “What you come away with are questions: How do we project ourselves? Should we hide our secrets? How do our secrets affect our relationships?”

Playwright Kirin McCrory — whose plays have been produced from Boston and New York to Los Angeles and New Orleans — blends comedy and drama with social commentary in her play about cultural differences and revelations sparked by encounters at a rural diner.

“This play is really about who we are and what we hide from ourselves,” McCrory said in a statement. “Where you come from shapes so much about how you interact with the world and, unfortunately, how the world interacts with you.”

The 75-minute one-act takes place during lunchtime at Tea Time!, a diner run by Miss Betty (Catherine Cryan) in a small town somewhere between Virginia and Florida.

“We’re thinking North Carolina,” Mateer said. “We’re approaching it as if the audience is looking in a window of the diner and seeing everything that happens.”

When married college professors Khent and Izzie stop for lunch, they’re confronted by Liza and Gunner, a pair of teenage troublemakers.

Kayla Theis plays Liza, who tests the urban couple.

“Scrappy and manipulative, Liza is smart but doesn’t apply herself,” Theis said. “She’s a lost soul ... who’s unhappy about where she is in life because she’s not going anywhere,” Theis said.

Liza is studying culinary-arts management at a community college and dating the impulsive Gunner (Dustin Schwab), but she isn’t serious about anything.

“Going to the diner is her fun and games,” Theis said. “Seeing who’ll walk in and who she can manipulate and mess with is her Friday night out. … She manipulates them because she’s trying to figure them out.”

Cat McAlpine plays kindly Izzie.

“She’s a little ignorant but well-meaning, in all its negative and positive connotations,” McAlpine said.

As University of Virginia professors on a trip, Izzie and husband Khent (Chad Anderson) visit the diner out of curiosity.

“Izzie wanted to see it because she’d never been in a greasy diner before. She had this idea that eating at such a diner would be a quirky and fun experience,” McAlpine said.

“But she puts blinders on, and it takes her awhile to start treating the people at the diner as real people and not characters. … She’s not malicious; she just doesn’t know any better.”

McAlpine, who grew up in several small Ohio towns, connects with the play’s

setting of the dark comedy.

“I recognize the mentalities of the locals, and I understand how people want to build a better life for themselves,” she said. “But I also recognize how

a lot of small-town citizens don’t feel the need to improve because they’re already happy — or happy being unhappy.”

In preparing the production, Mateer discussed the play several times with McCrory.

“She likes to explore these kinds of cultural clashes and the hidden secrets behind public perceptions,” Mateer said. “We all have secrets we hide from each other. This play explores how that affects their relationships with other people.”