“More Butter, Please”
A lot of talent, effort, and energy has gone into James Hindman’s
Off-Broadway confection, Popcorn Falls.
What it needs, though, is more of the butter of unforced laughter. Originally
produced last year, with positive reactions, at the Riverbank Theatre, Marine
City, MI, Popcorn Falls is a play you
visit more for the flavor of its gimmicky premise than the nutrition of its dramatic
value.Under the agile comic direction, however, of two-time Tony-winning Broadway star, Christian Borle (Something Rotten! and Peter and the Starcatcher), making his directing debut, it provides a digestible, if not always rib-tickling, theatrical snack.
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| Adam Heller, Tom Souhrada. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
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| Tom Souhrada, Adam Heller. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
Carefully written for its two-actor premise, the play introduces
a panoply of exceedingly eccentric local yokels, male and female, young and old. Changing
their voices, facial expressions, gestures, and postures, Heller and Souhadra deftly
suggest who’s who by using only the most basic of props, like spectacles, hats,
and the like. A shirt becomes an apron, a blanket a cat. By holding up a
baseball cap at eye level, the person to whom one is talking is conjured out of
thin air.
The actors transform from role to role with the speed of
light either before our eyes or by exiting one of the doors at either side of
the stage and entering almost immediately from the other. They often shape shift
right before our eyes.
So many characters come and go, it’s necessary for Heller
and Souhadra to exaggerate egregiously to avoid confusion. This, of course, only emphasizes the shallowness of the characters and makes us attend not
to the obviously paper-thin narrative but to the constant stream of show biz shtick.
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| Adam Heller, Tom Souhadra. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
After a while, watching Souhadra (who does more chameleon-like
changes than Heller), dressed in a pale blue custodian’s shirt (labelled "Joe"), do his impressions loses its appeal. There’s Doyle, with
his maniacal cackle; Austin, the doofus sheriff who can’t avoid poking folks
with his stun gun; Mrs. Parker, the flamboyantly theatrical librarian; Floyd,
the one-armed lumber yard dealer; Mrs. Stepp, the chain-smoking school teacher;
Becky, the gentle bartender who keeps coyly sweeping back a strand of hair; and on
and on.
Heller, who sometimes plays someone also portrayed by Souhadra,
is better at straight acting than vaudeville caricatures, but he does nicely
with a German called Hans, giving him the full faux-Nazi treatment, monocle and
all. A few mildly off-color and scatological yocks don’t make up for a script
so dependent on such broad stereotypes. I laughed more during ten minutes
of The Play that Goes Wrong, another farce
about putting on a play, than I did during all of Popcorn Falls.
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| Tom Souhadra, Adam Heller. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
Borle’s lightning-fast, clever direction, which includes
action in the small theatre’s aisle, does everything possible to wring laughs
from the script, but it also allows for quieter moments to introduce touches of
romantic sentiment. Costumes (by Joseph La Corte) and props may be minimal but Tim
Mackabee has created a rather realistic set showing a wood-paneled meeting hall
stage, with a curtained recess and solid, constantly used, doors.
(Scenes in locales other than the hall simply ignore their surroundings.) Jeff
Croiter’s volatile lighting and Jeffrey Lodin’s effective sound and music design
give substance to the production but there’s not much they can do to make it
funnier.
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| Adam Heller, Tom Souhadra, Photo: Monique Carboni. |
Everyone involved has given Popcorn Falls their best effort but the show lacks enough comic
butter to make it tasty enough. Orville Redenbacher, where are you?
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
The Davenport Theatre
354 W. 45th St., NYC
Through January 6
