Steve Martin’s short plays staged by CNY Playhouse lack focus and finesse
By Russ Tarby
Contributing Writer
There’s no doubt that actor/comedian Steve Martin can write. His contributions to The New Yorker shine as sharp and incisive slices of modern life, and he has produced several novels and screenplays as well.
In 1993, however, Martin was still finding his voice as a writer and his four one-acts, “WASP and other plays” — now on stage at CNY Playhouse in DeWitt — lack focus and finesse. His characters like talking but not to each other.
That seems to be the point of “WASP,” the longest of the four short plays, which attempts to skewer White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture by focusing on a “typical” 1950s family, mom and dad played by Elaine Boardway and Robert Miller, and kids portrayed by Carleena Manzi and Collin Dean. Mom hears voices, the boy sees visions, the girl daydreams and the father never listens to any of them.
Instead of using dialogue to get to the heart of the characters, Martin gives them each lengthy soliloquies that go nowhere.
After an intermission, the three shorter plays all draw upon Martin’s earliest foray into the world of entertainment as a magician. Katie Deferio plays “The Zig-Zag Woman,” a waitress stuck in an illusionist’s box.
She’s looking for “the one” who turns out to be a self-absorbed red plaid-jacketed young man played by Declan Cavanaugh. Along the way she banters with an old man portrayed by John LaCasse and a middle man, a Southern redneck played with pizazz by Issaiah Vergara.
As in “WASP,” the “Zig-Zag” characters are prone to speechifying. But at least there’s a happy, head-twisting ending.
“Patter for the Floating Lady” explores “a mismatch made in heaven” between a controlling magician (R. Bernard Ment) and his assistant, Angie (Sydney Schwab). Angie has hired her own assistant played by Jennie Russo, who loudly points out the magician’s obvious sexism as Angie prepares to depart.
“Patter” concludes with an ironic punchline as the magician requests a woman from the audience to assist his stage act. It’s as though Martin wrote the entire play around that final line.
The fourth play, “Guillotine,” is just a few minutes long. A fast-talking and sharply dressed customer played by Josh Taylor buys a guillotine from an antique dealer played by Chris Best. The customer installs the execution apparatus at his home, where his maid (Kasey McHale) attempts to dust it.
Let’s just say that the guillotine is the ultimate deus ex machina.
Three first-time directors — Colleen Deitrich, Sam Tamburo and Anna Livingston — helmed the first three of the one-acts (no director was listed for “Guillotine”). It’s a shame that Martin’s absurdist scripts offered these fledgling auteurs no stories to tell and scant action to manage.
“WASP and other plays” runs at 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Aug. 25, 26 and 27, at CNY Playhouse located near the Macy’s entrance at DeWitt’s ShoppingTown Mall. Tickets cost $17 on Thursday and $20 on Friday and Saturday. Call 885-8960 or go to cnyplayhouse.com for more information.
