(Review of Island Players Winter Play 2005)

Visit to a Small Planet by Gore Vidal
The Case of the Crushed Petunias by Tennessee Williams

Why, you might ask yourself, would thirty of your neighbors leave the snug warmth of their fires, and devote hundreds of hours to so fleeting and intangible an undertaking? Why would they risk the public embarrassment. Why would they subject others in their households to weeks of annoying repetition. Why volunteer to shlep stuff here and shlep stuff there. Why would they venture out in the dead of winter to be told where to stand and what to say when their spouses are willing to provide this at home. Why you ask? Because they've succumbed to the inexplicable temptation to "trod the boards", to participate in community theater. Some , admittedly, succumb easier than others. A few of those cast in the Island Players winter production needed a visit from Life Inc., in the guise of Dave Ranney, to ply them from their cozy warrens. Most wish to participate, I think, as a gift to their friends and neighbors. It's done for the same reasons that other Islanders organize pot luck gatherings, or elaborately decorate their homes on Halloween. They feel a shared sense of community and they want to express this through active participation.

The Players winter production consisted of two one act plays, Visit to a Small Planet, by Gore Vidal and The Case of the Crushed Petunias, by Tennessee Williams. Mounting two plays, even shorter ones, is an ambitious undertaking. There was a combined cast of sixteen and a supporting cast of an additional fifteen. Dave Ranny made his directorial debut with the Island Players. As anyone who knows Dave might have anticipated, he did a great job. Having sampled the thespian life myself, I was awed by the casts nearly flawless command of so much dialogue. They must have been difficult to live with in the preceding weeks. The sets were appropriately simple, and artfully constructed. The casting was terrific, it seemed uncanny that just the right people were willing and available for such appropriate matching. This is, after all, a small island. The performances were, to a person, excellent. Space doesn't permit all of the deserving individual accolades but Jenny Graham's portrayal of Dorothy, Steve Reiss's portrayal of Life Inc., and Cindra's adorable depiction of the Kreton were stand outs.

The plays themselves were funny but they had a provocative subtext. We all have acquaintances who've rigidly fortified themselves against any real involvement with life. Theirs may be a half life, but it precludes disappointment. Life is, after all, a messy business. Visitors was a bit more complicated. It's interesting to put on the alien's hat and imagine yourself dropped on our planet, without all of the self deluding mechanisms that allow us to distort reality, to make black white, to make it almost palatable. How would humanity look? Violence may not be our deepest pleasure, as Kreton contends, but it appears to have legions of fans. The next time a fresh faced, bow tied, hegemony spewing neo con appears on my screen to suggest that rearranging this place or that will have inestimable benefits for mankind I'm going to don my alien cap. I'm guessing that the objective truth of his playfull speculations will look a lot more like liberated Fallugah than it does Elysian Fields. In fact, that may very well be an emotionaly thwarted alien behind that bow tie.

I enjoyed the Players winter offering immensely. So earnest and unlikely a treat in this, my least favorite of months. So, stop a local thespian on the street when you see one. Tell them they were terrific, they love that. And if you know anyone holed up behind their frozen Petunias, nudge them towards the community theater, it's hardly messy at all.