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review Theater is crazy. Yes, it is. And it’s not cost-effective, either. Given the money you earn for acting and the amount of time you spend creating a play, you have to be crazy to do it. And there’s no crazier experience than summer stock. If you’re an actor or a director, you know what it means: shared bathrooms and dorm rooms, crazy rehearsals, being cast against type and going on against the odds. The audience doesn’t know if you’re good or bad -– and sometimes they’re too unsophisticated to care. It’s a time of great drama and some humor, as we learn in Ken LeZebnik’s "Sink Eating" -– a affecting comic valentine to summer stock and the acting life, now at the Matrix in Hollywood. LeZebnik is a writer for "Providence", but before that, he belonged to Minneapolis’ Mixed Blood Theatre Company. One of his old Mixed Blood chums, Rose Portillo, directs a fine cast of five (Alan Woolf, Kate Fuglei, Patrick O’Connell, April Grace and James Gleason) in nine roles. It’s a fast-moving play, mostly in monologues, that has real resonance for any actor. "We’re going to be doing a lot of sink eating this summer. It’s just like having dinner, except without plates and good food," explains Amy, an actress whose husband Harry has been hurriedly recruited to direct two concurrent shows -– "West Side Story" and "Romeo and Juliet" -– out on the Great Plains at the Grist Mill Theatre. (The script is actually much subtler than this metaphor would suggest.) The disastrous, under-rehearsed double bill totters toward opening night under the classic summer stock credo: "You wear what you bring, and you say what you remember." The play takes place in a communal kitchen shared by the actors, and the point of community is an unseen refrigerator at downstage center. Much of the action references two unseen characters: a young, emotionally damaged actor named David, and a little boy named Zach, who is Amy and Harry’s infant son. This may seem like a weird tactic, but it works well -– especially as David threatens the production with his antics and Harry contemplates cheating on Amy with an Orange County ingenue named Miriam. O’Connell and Fuglei are sharp as Harry and Amy and as a parallel couple, Ellen and Mookie, who have trod the boards at the Grist Mill for nearly 20 years. Grace is not only charming as Miriam but also as the down-home Drusilla, who craves men and fried food. Gleason is very touching as Farley, an older gay thespian who alternately berates and cares for David, and as Roy, a cynical veteran of '60s activist theatre. Woolf plays a very funny, if much less interesting role: he’s Peter, a horny, drug-addicted tech with a military history obsession. "Sink Eating" really reveals how theater takes a toll on a life. Do it long enough, and you’ll start to wonder why you’re doing it all. Then you simply realize you have to do it, if only to share your obsession with like-minded strangers. "Sink Eating" introduces us to nine of them, and it’s a great night out for anyone who’s gotten that MFA and trudged across America.
"Sink Eating", presented by Marlow Evans Productions at the Matrix
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