It’s been said you can’t choose your family, and according to David Lindsay-Abaire’s play “Ripcord,” often you can’t choose your roommates either.
Abby, played by Lakeside Little Theatre veteran Georgette Richmond, is very territorial about her room at the Bristol Place Senior Living Facility. When talkative Marilyn — Barbara Pruitt making her LLT debut — is assigned to share the two-bed living quarters, Abby is having none of it. Refereeing their bickering is Scotty — the always reliable Zane Pumiglia — a nurse and go-to employee of the Facility.
When it is revealed that the bitter Abby does not scare and optimistic Marilyn will not get angry, a bet between the two women drives the plot into one-upmanship while revealing each character’s cracks and crevices. As soon as a vulnerability is exposed in one woman the other rips at it like a lioness on fresh meat. Can Marilyn bring Abby to feel fear, a feeling she claims to have conquered? Abby believes she can stir up anger in Marilyn, who swears she no longer wastes time or energy on that particular emotion.
The three lead actors are all up to the task of the push and pull necessary to be conniving yet sympathetic. Oddly, the two women actually seem a bit young to be living in a senior facility with the ability to read and do Sudoku puzzles without glasses or good lighting. But just as Lakeside audiences are forgiving when older actors play younger parts so it goes in reverse as well.
Richmond is convincing as a nasty senior, feeling entitled to reject any roommate the facility places in her domain despite the fact she’s not paying for a private room. Pruitt has a natural ability to provoke laughter at the appropriate moment while slyly balancing despicable behavior with a drop of kindness. Pumiglia’s Scotty rounds off the rough edges as he expertly attempts to keep the two ladies from killing each other while remaining unscathed himself.
Minor characters enter the scene to aid and abet the battle where the winner gets the bed by the sunlit window or the loser is banished to another room entirely. Marilyn’s daughter Colleen, played with gusto by Linda Freeman, and her begrudging son in-law Derek, adeptly embodied by Al Kirkland, join the struggle. Abby is left to her own devices, but her angry core propels her to keep up with the viciousness. Johan Dirkes lends authority in two smaller roles and Damyn Young holds his own in a key scene as Abby’s estranged son.
In her maiden voyage as a director for LLT, Collette Clavadetscher brings a sure hand to the comedic nuances and full belly laughs the play offers its audience. And the emotion that builds between the two leads is neither cloying nor melodramatic as it easily could have been by a less certain director. Clavadetscher has acted in several comedies at LLT and directed others at the Naked Stage, perhaps giving her insight into the proper timing needed to evoke laughs at the right time and depth.
Most of the play’s action takes place in the shared room the two women are fighting to reign over with the exception of several scene changes that are awkward and lengthy, hampering the tempo of the play. Had the set been designed to accommodate a curtain pulled easily across the stage, the result might have had a better flow. However, the room itself is well crafted, including an adjoining bathroom that plays a critical role in the ongoing feud. Sharon Brackenbury is to be credited with the set design, decoration and painting, an important task when it is the room itself that sets the action in motion.
An inventive and clever special effect is credited to Thom Weeks, who pulls off a bit of masterly theater magic. Others behind the scenes staff include Stage Manager Karen Lee, Producer Margo Eberly, Assistant Stage Manager Sheron Lowry and set painters Emily Crocker and Joy Cook. Set construction includes a team of four: Earl Schenck, Richard Bansbach, David Bryen and Michael Koch.
Props are competently handled by Sandra Murr, lighting by Kevin Leitch and Alan Bowers, sound by James Jack, wardrobe by Johanna Clark, and makeup by Nancy Jessop. The hairstylist is Kathleen Morris and Chet Beeswanger is the stagehand.
“Ripcord” is the device that releases a parachute during a plane jump, breaking the fall and gliding the skydiver onto the ground. Abby and Marilyn are an uneasy fit at first, Abby the most intolerant of the two, until bit by bit they uncover each other’s secrets, some rosy, others dark and harsh. From those discoveries comes understanding, empathy and even compassion in spite of their differences.
The play deserves a better ending. Not all wrapped up with a tidy bow, but it certainly could have left the audience with a stronger comment on the last act of a senior’s world. Lindsay-Abaire doesn’t necessarily intend to deliver a message of world unity, but he does build a meaningful bond among two women that reveals how much we all have in common. He does it with some true laughs along the way, leaving us with the feeling our two warring characters might just ease one another’s stay on earth.
“Ripcord” continues its run at the Lakeside Little Theatre through October 8.