Never After Happily, Attic Productions

 April 23-May 3, D. Geraldine Lawson Performing Arts Center, Fincastle, 7:30 pm, 90 minute run time, no intermission

This is a very worthwhile play, and an able production: you should go see it! (Reasons below).

Some notes on the script, written by Cindy Marcus, which was new to me --

This is a deceptively ambitious script, which requires the actors to master at least three things: comedy (some extremely funny lines in there), pathos (can they make us care?), and connection.

In brief, the story is this: a writer has beef with the whole world of "fairytales" for having given her a false expectation of a happy ending. We only get a very brief glimpse of the writer's backstory (she was, in fact, lucky in love but then her love got sick... that's all I caught). The writer then undertakes to rewrite, or add "realistic" sequels to, several familiar fairy tales to demonstrate their lack of happy ending. There is a good deal of breaking the fourth wall and audience participation. In the end, the characters find a way to demonstrate to the writer that life is both happy and sad, that endings are messy, and that love and connection are what matter. It's very sweet, and very funny.

This script presupposes quite a bit of shared cultural knowledge. Some fairy tale depictions definitely relied on their Disney movies (Snow White, Rapunzel, the Little Mermaid); others require knowledge of certain nursery rhymes (Hey diddle diddle, Jack Horner). I definitely saw echoes of Into the Woods (which Attic will be performing later this summer) in the script's treatment of Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, and Cinderella herself. As with Into the Woods, Cinderella is a very important character, who persists throughout the play and whose relationship with Prince Charming is questioned, and who offers one moral to the story in relation to "moments" that really did sound like one of the Baker's Wife's songs from Into the Woods.  

Best I can tell from the internet, this play is a fairly common offering from children's theaters and community theaters nationwide. It's a great choice for several reasons. The cast is fairly large, the play is easily subdivided into scenes only involving a few actors at a time, for ease of rehearsing, and there's delightful audience participation. The lines are laugh-out-loud funny but inoffensive, the moral of the story is a bit pat but nevertheless heart-warming, and it's fast paced and entertaining.

Director Kelli Hobson, who has extensive acting experience but is directing for the first time in this production, writes in the show notes that reading this play included "the perfect balance of playful yet poignant." She has done an able job in mounting this production, and all involved should be proud. The sparse crowd on 4/23 laughed heartily at the funny bits, booed and applauded as desired.  It was a genuinely positive experience, which is why everyone reading this should get themselves to Attic before the run of this play is over!

Hobson, in her opening remarks, noted that audience reactions were vital to encourage the actors - this connection is very important to them; and indeed, this whole play is about the importance of connection. The ensemble does pull off that connection, despite a few missed opportunities.

One missed opportunity stems from the venue itself. The Lawson Performing Arts Center is lovely, but frankly a bit too large for this production. (Also: cold. Bring a sweater.) The stage is enormous - visually speaking, the actors were dwarfed by the size of the proscenium, and in order to fill it for a scene they were often unnaturally spread out from one another. The "side" scenes (smaller bits between the larger scenes) were played on the left and right edges of the stage under a spotlight, and these scenes were much more effective because the actors could actually get close to one another and interact in a more realistic and engaging fashion. 

I do think this problem would be partially remedied if the audience were fuller -- which is why you absolutely need to go see this play. This play, literally, has a part for YOU due to the audience participation. And if there were a bigger audience, it would match the scale of the production much better.

Another missed opportunity stems from the casting. There are some very able comedic actors in this bunch. Moriah Hinshaw's Chicken Little is delightfully neurotic and so funny; Avrey Coble's Jack had me laughing out loud; Beverly Amsler's Doc is especially well done; and Selene Kelly shines in her physical humor as the Herald. Nevertheless, many laugh lines do not quite land or the words feel "swallowed." Sometimes punch lines (as when the Card Girl comes out to display "boo" or "applause") are awkwardly delayed. These factors are likely to get better with time, so going to see this play in the second weekend is probably a good idea.

The humor of the play lands, mostly. The pathos of the play is further from the mark. Heather O'Bryan has a little ways to go, as Ella, the writer. In this performance, she seemed to have barely learned her lines, and many were delivered awkwardly. In a play containing much debate over who or what is "real," O'Bryan is not quite believable as the writer. We know precious little of the writer's backstory or where her beef with fairy tales comes from, but O'Bryan's performance could fill in those gaps. She clearly has the potential to help us sympathize more with Ella's agenda and her pain. I do think all of these shortcomings will improve with time. 

Ella and Cinderella are central to the debate of the play, and clearly they represent two parts of one writer's psyche ("Cindy" and Ella, get it?). O'Bryan, as Ella, and Carol Royal, as Cindy, have a very important job in pulling the audience back and forth: we agree with each side of the debate, and feel the unresolved tension. They could have been set up more for this: with costumes that were complimentary, perhaps; with physicality that was either mirroring between them or contrasting between them. I would have loved to see Cindy actually caring about Ella, at least a little bit; or Ella yearning to be Cindy in her more tender moments. The relationship between them is really quite central to the play. The two actors have a lot of potential to make this relationship more vital. Royal is a strong and believable Cindy. 

But Hobson has not quite set Royal up for success either. A final scene between Cindy and Charming has incredible potential: we finally see the older couple at home, reaching for contentment and satisfaction after an adventuresome life. The tone of this section is less comic, more sympathetic. Paul Mullins' Charming brings a sensible groundedness that is frankly lacking in the other characters of this play, and occasionally this scene works some magic. But marooned in the middle of a massive stage with one uncomfortable looking sofa for furniture, the two characters rarely even touch. They still suffer from a lack of connection, visually speaking.

In fact, very few characters touch each other in this play, or display genuine connection in other ways. Add to this the large venue that seems to swallow them up; and the lapses in timing here and there... for a play about connection, many of the connections miss the mark.

But many don't! In the performance I saw, we were laughing a lot! The final, moving ending was heartfelt, and the audience genuinely enjoyed themselves. I think with a fuller audience and a few more performances under their belt to tighten things up, this play is going to be wonderful. 

You have a part to play. Be that fuller audience. Go see Never After Happily!