Poor Sam Abrams. The "Rose Adelle" song he wrote for a girl of that name became a monster hit and won him the girl. But his passion has cooled after 25 years of marriage, and one-hit-wonder Samis desperately seeking inspiration for a new hit by dredging up feelings he had for Allyson, a girl he lusted after before Rose.
There you have the premise of Deborah Zoe Laufer's eager-to-please but disappointing comedy that opened the 34th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Six other full-length plays plus four 10-minute plays will follow.
Brian Russell as depressed, over-the-hill Sam and Mimi Lieber as feisty, wanting-to-be-adored Rose expertly milk Laufer's sit-com lines for optimum laughs. Those two are fun to watch and hear with their pithy banter.
They take a Mediterranean cruise (Rose's idea) to rekindle togetherness, but things take a surreal turn when Sam hears a mythological siren seductively singing what he thinks is his Allyson song to lure navigators to crash their ships.
Enthralled, Sam jumps overboard and ends up beached and disoriented on a rock on the small island where the siren (Lindsey Wochley) sits playing with a hand-held solitaire game that washed up on shore one day. She thinks it's a gift from her gods. He thinks she looks like Allyson, the Teaneck, NJ, girl who broke his heart in high school. Luckily for Sam, the siren dotes on that "magic box" because her need for replacement batteries gets Sam back to the real world after he promises to bring some back for her. All very neat and sweet.
Wockley, whose siren speeches are sometimes inaudible because she lies with her back to a section of the audience in this in-the-round production, fares far better earlier as a travel agent who sells the couple their tour and later as a snippy waitress who serves Rose and her old flame Richard Miller (Ben Hollandsworth) whom Rose calls up and meets in a restaurant after Sam is thought dead.
Laufer's clever idea is to have Richard played by a 20-something actor who complains of a bad back and walks like an old man. It's a nice touch that only Rose doesn't see him as elderly.
Director Casey Stangl keeps everything moving smoothly in this intermissionless exercise. Watch how Sam edges next to a phallic outcropping as the siren asks if he'd like to touch her. And watch where Rose sprays perfume as she leaves for her dinner date with Richard.
Costume designer Sonya Berlovitz dresses Rose in hilariously inappropriate youthful clothes for that dinner date. A slinky form-fitting outfit is Berlovitz's eye-catching design for the gadget-loving siren.
Scenic designer Michael B. Raiford's very blue seascape painted on the theater floor contains at various times a cruise ship railing, the siren's island, and a rowboat used at play's end by Sam and Rose to bring the plot full circle.
What about the songs? The siren supposedly sings the one Sam was contemplating for Allyson. "Rose Adelle" with Laufer's lyrics ("Rose Adelle, Rose Adelle, looked my way and how I fell ") uses a melody composed by ATL resident designer Matt Callahan. I heard no one come out humming or whistling them.
