Seven short plays make a stop at ‘Motel’
The story lines in seven short plays by six authors could get confusing, but came together nicely in “The Gorges Motel.”
Set in and around the same room in a scenic upstate New York motel, the play opened Friday at Carpenter Square Theatre, 800 W Main.
Motel owner Vikki Simer greeted us and the first guest with unwanted questions and tales of the glacier that once “ripped open the world.”
Simer was even more appealing, begging for a “Second Chance” to take her grandchildren to Disneyland before she dies, in a play by Lynne Halliday.
But Simer was most satisfying in part three of the “Missing” vignette, getting guests together for a laser show about the area’s geologic history.
Indeed, the play by James Hindman, supplied a crucial “Missing” link to the other six playlets, each of which gave its characters a chance to shine.
Mariah Warren and Karen Garlitz were funny, learning they both slept with the same man while getting ready for a wedding, in Craig Pospisil’s “Kissing Cousins.”
East coast accents and wild outfits added an edge to the humor of DiAnn McDown and Angela Lux in Isaac Himmelman’s “What Lola Saw.”
Cam Taylor was glibly seductive as a self-ordained minister, fast-talking Garlitz, as his reluctant but loving bride-to-be, in Halliday’s irreverent “Reverend.”
But Taylor was poignant rather than funny in “Missing, Part 2,” as a gay son reconciling, touchingly, with his sister, wellplayed by Lux.
Romance and comedy made a good mix, like the legalized marijuana in Colorado’s “Breckenridge,” in a short play by Gretchen Cryer.
In it, David Burkhart was just folksy and flawed enough, as a plumber, finding and falling for the inner hippie in McDown, while fixing her toilet.
Wildly wacky and charming was Arlene Hutton’s “Here Comes The Drone,” in which the errant title drone ruins the wedding of Garlitz, but helps her find herself.
Uneven in places, but hard to resist, the play directed by Rhonda Clark, with a fine inside and outside the motel set by Ben Hall, is highly recommended.