One of the main goals of this evening was just to hear the play out loud for the first time. To that end, the show was fully cast with people that all ‘looked’ the part. The actors sat in the middle of the theatre on chairs in a semi circle reading their roles from scripts. Outside the cast, one extra person sat in the semi circle to read out the stage directions to help the audience envision some of the movement they were not seeing.

A reading is a different beast from a full blown production, and to some extent, the ability of the actors is highly exposed due to the fact that the audience has no distractions and the actors have nothing to rely on except their interaction. For the most part, everyone did a sufficient job, however a couple of actors really stood out as exceptional and thus really made their characters something special and real in my mind. Conversely,

a couple of actors seemed not ready for the challenge that was Henry Hobbs.

Of note were the actors reading the roles of Walter and Ellie. Walter is a pivotal role that has deep and complex motives. It is absolutely critical that this character be played by an actor who truly understands the role, and BOB BURCHETTE showed his years of experience by really giving us a likeable, three-dimensional character. Similarly MARTI TERRY, playing the role of Ellie, portrayed a very real grandmother from the area and delivered her reading perfectly.

On the other hand LYNN ROLLINS reading Beth and JONATHAN WARD reading Henry Hobbs, seemed less prepared, to the detriment to the script. Henry Hobbs has many very long monologues (a couple of which I plan to steal for auditions) and has to constantly switch between normal interaction with the other characters, frank confessions to the audience, and somewhat melodramatic emotional monologues. Though Ward made these switches easily, his delivery was the same each time, and very one-dimensional almost to the point of distraction.

Though I feel the character of Beth is weakly written and a tough one to pull off well, I still wanted more dimension to the reading. Most all of the lines were delivered the same way without much change in her level. It felt like Ms. Rollins hadn’t spent a lot of time with her character, with the result that there was no real commitment or choices made.

The exciting part of the night, though, began when the play ended. Wray came down and began an open forum with the audience, fielding questions and eventually asking some questions of his own. As might be expected, the audience was not without opinion, and this provided some great insight as to how the show might be received. Some of the responses were how each audience member was affected. Others comments consisted of logistical problems identified in the show. However, this is where the ‘helpful’ help ended and the ‘dangerous’ help began, because people also tried to explain to the author how some themes and styles he used were, to paraphrase in the extreme, wrong. Weeding through all of these comments will be a dangerous endeavor for the writer, and pandering to everyone could leave this baby a hollow shell of its former self.

The play is set in and refers often to the Hampton Roads area. At times these local references get rattled off like a laundry list and the uninitiated audience member starts to feel like Charlie Brown listening to his teacher. These references may be entertaining for audience members in this area but could be distracting for non-locals, without providing any of the color that the author may have been looking for.

The other factor that may limit the play's success is how incongruous the style is with the characters and setting. The setting and characters are all very real and common. However the writing ventures away from conversational tone too often for poetic purposes. A lot of the artistic effects, though effective, at times seems forced.

All in all, the play was in remarkable shape for how early it is in “the life of a play”.

It’s strength is in its powerful theme

This event represents another one of a kind experience for this area; something that City Arts at the 40th Street Stage seems to specialize in. Between high quality, nigh professional shows and indie film festivals, this little company in this little black box theatre continually raises the bar when it comes to culturally enhancing our community. What is truly exciting about  events like these is that, besides providing new work for us starving artists, it is another step toward establishing Hampton Roads a artistically creative hub: a community that not only enjoys the arts, but creates art.

If you want to take a step up in the ranks of artistic culture, take a step into the 40th.