Full disclosure: I received a press ticket to review this show
I'll be honest with you. I'd never heard of Eat Your Heart Out, written by Nick Hall, when I was invited to review it. Google searches led me to a paltry lot of old announcements of the show being performed in New Jersey and La Brea, CA. And many, many reviews. Oh my...everyone seemed to love it, calling it funny and touching, and that it elicited laughter and a few tears. So why didn't I like it?
I tried to find a good description of the show, but since it was off-off Broadway, the best I could find was the blurb on the Samuel E French web site (they license the rights of the show at $75/performance). It says, "Charlie's an out of work actor currently working as a waiter (hmmm, something new). The scene is a series of hilarious encounters (not so much) in Manhattan restaurants both elegant and shabby. By changing the tablecloths in the course of the action, the basic setting of three tables and six chairs becomes another place. The action's uninterrupted (true, but you better have precise pacing) and the comedy never stops (false on all accounts). The other performers play several parts; the girl desperately trying to eat snails and oysters to please her fiance, the middle aged lovers so intent on each other they cannot order dinner; the rich, embittered astrologer; the timid man who never gets a waiter; the agents, directors, actors, and waiters. An amusing (debatable) gallery of characters whose stories intertwine and finally involve Charlie." Sounds exciting, yes? By the way, the parenthetical commentary is mine. So is the rest of this post.
Personally, I found the script to be weak, with very little substance. It's all a series of encounters broken up by actor talk (I went on an audition today and funny actor stuff happened...that sort of thing) while Charlie and the bus boy change the tablecloths. Some were funny, and some just went on well after the point was made until you wanted to scream ENOUGH ALREADY. The thematic connection between the scenes is tenuous except for the fact that Charlie is the waiter. He is the glue that holds the scenes together, but he's not enough. And this is not a comment on JP Quirk's portrayal of Charlie. He did a good job as the yeoman of the food-service world. Believeable for the most part at being the actor, but slid a bit into being an actor and disconnecting himself from the scene. But the character of Charlie just isn't compelling.
Taryn Hettlinger Parise and her husband Tony Parise play all the axuillary "older" characters in the various dining establishments (the best one is a Poe-themed restaurant called Tintinnabulation, with a bell on each table and a dead raven at the cash register). They were adequate for what they had to do, which was be basic stereotypes of "older" characters, but neither brought any spark to the table. Anika Bryceson presented us the "younger" women. She had a look that draws your eye, but then did little to hold it. Most of her lines as reoccuring character Doris were responses to what Charlie would say, and she would answer in a shy, coquettish way...down and to stage left. Every time. Every single time. It reeked havoc on the pacing of the first scene, which should snap, crackle and pop.
The highlight for me was the performance of Terrell Riggins as the "younger" men. His character of the ostentatious customer at Tintinnablulation screamed snobby and oozed smarmy. His portrayal of the young man with lust in his heart that morphs into a lustful coupling with Bryceson on the table in a Mediterranean restaurant table (funny, but went too long) was certainly committed. And his turn as the waiter who is the moral antithesis of Charlie was well fleshed out. And, I would be remiss if I didn't say that the appearance of Aidan Descourouez as the I-Pod shuffling bus boy at each eatery always brought a smile to my face, as well as some toe tapping.
Weak acting shows the holes in a weak script. That's not the case here. The cast did a decent job, but had an insurmountable hill to climb with a show that goes nowhere. Pacing became an issue a few times, some of which could have been tightened by director Heidi Swarthout. But she's not responsible for Act 2, which went on for eternity. In my notes, I wrote, "Wow, when will this end? Where is it going. And why should I care?" Yeah, there's a problem with the script.
Was it worth the price of admission? Not the show, but support the actors if you can. A couple of them do nice work. You have two more performances. For tickets and other information, visit Albright's web site.
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