In Tell Mr. Poulos, Donald Wollner’s clever domestic dramedy, husband and wife Jimmy and Lisa (Beresford Bennett and Yetta Gottesman, respectively) are struggling to survive in a hostile world. Lisa works part-time as a nurse, but he just lost his accountancy job at an upscale firm, making it hard for them to raise a kid and pay the rent. To stay afloat financially, they decide to rent out one of their rooms to a large, elderly Greek-American gentleman named Mr Poulos (Greek for chicken, by the way).
Mr Poulos (Travis Michael Holder), who would rather live with them than his shrewish daughter, spends all of his time in Jimmy and Lisa’s kitchen, reading a Greek newspaper and pretending not to understand a word of English. As a result, Jimmy and Lisa separately treat him as a sounding board, giving vent to all their complaints, fears and secrets. When they’re not babbling away to the stone-faced Mr Poulos, Jimmy and Lisa try to cope with their unhappy lives. The former endures a series of blackly comic job interviews which are conducted by a succession of officious women (all of whom are played brilliantly by Kina Bermudez). The latter must put up with the clumsy advances of her octogenarian patient, Mr Bernstein. Jimmy further complicates his life by sliding into an affair with Isabelle, a former colleague (Lindsey Andersen, in a virtuoso performance). Part waif, part vixen, Isabelle plays Jimmy like a violin, enticing him into her bed, then threatening suicide when he tries to end the affair. Poor Jimmy. He not only locks himself into a love triangle but takes on a new job for which he is supremely ill-equipped--driving a cement truck. No wonder he can’t stop pouring out his heart to Mr Poulos. To describe how the playwright resolves all the problems faced by Jimmy, Lisa and Isabelle would be to give too much away. Suffice to say, Wollner ties things up in a largely humorous way which, though predictable, is not false or sentimental. He is greatly aided by the expert touch of director Page Burkholder, who keeps things moving swiftly and tellingly, and by the estimable work of her five-person cast.
