What is Susan’s Secret?
Some Secrets are Best Left Untold…
What is Susan’s Secret?
Theater Review
Today’s theatrical koan: If a comedy isn’t funny, is it still a comedy?
What is Susan’s Secret?, a play currently being produced by All An Act Theatre Productions, presents Susan (Lisa Simonian) and her husband, Michael (David W. Mitchell), two elderly innkeepers who, to make improvements to their property, entice craftsmen, plumbers, electricians, etc., to their site, then scam them to work for free.
Written by Michael and Susan Parker, the somewhat quaint play never really spreads its wings and takes off. Or evolves. Characters enter, register at the inn, learn of the con and relegate themselves to their labor. Then others enter and learn they’re scammed. Rinse and repeat.
To quote the Bard: The play’s the thing. As a comedy, it wasn’t particularly funny. Gauging the audience reaction from the Sunday matinee I attended, they’d agree. The few chuckles and chortles from the crowd were sparse, at best.
One of the problems were the lead characters, Susan and Michael. They weren’t particularly likable. Perhaps the playwrights felt that by making the bunco innkeepers elderly, that made them somehow cute and adorable. But why should the audience root for them when they’re scamming honest people? Instead, I found myself empathizing with the craftsmen: the conned plumber, tiler, and fake electrician, rather siding with the crafty innkeepers.
Though written in 2011, Secret has an odd, dated feeling to it. Things that were at one time rendered funny seem improper within the show. Michael’s issue with senility–where he would slip in and out of reality fighting at the Alamo or serving with General Washington at Valley Forge”fell flat.
The same with Paul (Zach Mota), a male character who’s forced into dressing in drag. Maybe the playwrights deemed it sidesplitting when composed on their typewriter or passed to their scrivener, but nowadays with cross-gender issues, it somehow seemed inappropriate to laugh at the awkward character put in dress and wig. By the dirth of laughter, the audience concurred.
While lacking the skills of an alchemist to transform this leaden two-act play to gold, Larry Lewis aptly directed the cast’s competent workmanlike performances with the source at hand.
As for Susan’s secret, which is revealed at the very end of the play, her secret is safe with me. I must’ve tuned out, daydreaming about other shows I could’ve attended.
*** Daphne Beaumont
What is Susan’s Secret? runs through May 21. For more information, visit www.allanact.net.
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