Expectations are the hobgoblins of the complacent mind. Because nonsense is the new sense when Lewis Black is your playwright. Kicking off summer with a comedic offering, Bowie Community Theatre is retro-tripping back to the summer of 1981 with Lewis Black’s One Slight Hitch. Directed by Jennifer L. Franklin, this show has all the potential hallmarks of a farce and might even make you giggle.
The players do well with this script but the show is not without issues and the majority of those issues come from playwright Lewis Black. The thing that makes Lewis Black so funny is his apoplectic, bombastic, over-the-top moments of inexplicable rage during his stand-up routines. Those are noticeably absent from his play both in the setup and the dialogue that he has penned. One Slight Hitch has all the formulaic inference of being a farce (there’s coming and going and door-slamming and multiple doors) but it never quite makes it there. (Director Jennifer L. Franklin could have made the show more salvageable and steered it in the farcical direction if the pacing had been doubled and tripled in places but this was unfortunately not the case.) And that’s not to say that the play does not contain funny moments— it does, but the play itself lacks any sense of urgency. There’s a wedding happening the day of the play’s action and it’s obvious that Lewis Black has never been a part of getting ready for a wedding. Even in 1981 it seems far-fetched and unlikely that the bride would just be puttering around the house not in her dress, shillyshallying all about (same with everyone else— including the dad getting dolled up in fishing gear) unless this was a mentionable plot point (which it is not.)
In addition to lacking urgency, there’s just too many other things happening in the play that don’t cohesively land it in camp comedy or camp drama. Approaching the pinnacle discovery for the ‘main character’ (who is not the protagonist in this story; it’s Courtney’s story but it’s being told through P.B.’s lens and P.B. is the narrative aside who semi-occasionally with no rhyme or reason to her consistency addresses the audience with what’s happening) Lewis Black is unclear in what he’s attempting to achieve. Actually, it’s clear that he’s trying to make a point about an independent woman in the 80’s it’s just the way he goes about it muddles it up so much so that this point is almost completely missed.
To Director Jennifer L. Franklin’s credit, despite the sluggish pacing (there end up being moments, even though they are often slight, frequently throughout the performance where these pauses just hang and it would seem that these were places where rapid-fire dialogue should be overlapping or crazy physical shenanigans should be occurring on stage), she does a great job of casting the show and developing the intrapersonal, albeit awkward, relationships between characters.
Dan Lavanga’s Set Design is impressive. It’s a large interior of a home, with stairs that go up (and are actually tilted correctly and sight-lined well so that as the character disappears backstage they appear to continue to be going up stairs to an invisible second-story), and rooms that lead off to the “depth of the house” all done in slightly different shades of pastels. (Shout-out to Set Painter Rose Hull.) And the doors all function, don’t wobble, and really stay open and or closed, respectively. (This seems like such a frivolous thing to have to point out but so often it gets done incorrectly that it’s a miracle to see a door that when it opens it stays open, when it’s slammed shut it doesn’t shake the whole set and stays shut, etc.)
Ordinarily, basic lighting for an interior-design show would get a nod of praise and that would be that. But the lighting design that the Bowie Playhouse Staff has implemented for this production is just downright strange, adding to some of the confusion about what it is the overall production is trying to accomplish. Whenever P.B. starts referencing the Walkman the lights disappear and some blinking disco dots in red and green flash all around while she dances in semi-darkness. Not sure why this was necessary (or if it’s a scripted necessity, it furthers the point that Lewis Black is no playwright) but it creates this divide between reality and fantasy that is otherwise inconsistent with what’s happening on stage. The same is true when Delia goes on her emotional bender at the end of the performance. It’s almost like she’s trying to have some sort of nostalgic retro-fitted flashback as she waxes on about her dreams except the entire stage is flood-washed in fuchsia-magenta, which makes everything look really weird. And you could get behind this as a concept— if everything and everyone in the background were to freeze and the character were to have this monologue as a true nostalgic soliloquy. But that doesn’t happen; the daughters all start asking her if she’s okay, apologizing, etc. and it just feels weirdly out of place for this lighting choice.
Costumes, designed by Jeanne Binney, are somewhat hit and miss. There are some excellent representations of 80’s fashion— like the color-patch test-pattern dress seen on Melanie and the garish attire that gets given to P.B., making her a true kid of the 80’s. But then the wedding dress is not at all the style of the 80’s (or arguably the late 70’s.) And the wedding dress itself is a point of contention for the play overall; if it’s scripted per Lewis Black then it absolutely misses the mark (where he’s again going for that “I’m a strong, independent 80’s woman so I’m going to lull the audience into thinking one thing and then WHAM surprise them with this total revelation of independence” and totally misses the mark.) If it was a directorial decision, given that it’s not really an 80’s wedding dress with the full long sleeves, huge poofy shoulders, and hideous lace galore, it just feels out of place. The scene could have been more strongly served if Courtney was standing there in a dressing gown (even if it was accented with a bridal veil or tiara) given the outcome that moment.
Despite all of these things, the audience did seem to laugh a fair bit at some of the funnier moments and the performers did an impressive job with the script, all things considered. The ho-hum paternal figure of Doc (Bill Fellows) has some raw deadpan humor that is subtle and well-delivered. And when Fellows’ character gets drunk he’s a hoot. Plus he’s got great bunny slippers. He’s one of the only characters that does not suffer from “vocal trail-off” where when he’s speaking more intimate lines, his voice softens to the point of making it difficult to hear him. (The Bowie Playhouse, at least for this BCT performance of One Slight Hitch, is not utilizing microphones and this became a consistent issue for moments that did not involve screaming for several of the characters.)
Delia (Maribeth Vogel) is hilarious when she’s freaking out about various things that go wrong in true mother of the bride fashion and when she starts stomping off up the stairs or through the various doors, her physical delivery of comedy is on point. Her meltdown over the melting shrimp boats is one of the highlights of her performance. Courtney (Rachel Simms) finds ways to balance all of her interactions in a believable fashion.
Melanie (Kat Binney) is the epitome of oversexed and really amps up the chaos once she gets involved in the scenes, particularly where Ryan (Randy Lindsay) is involved. Lindsay’s character, who is having some sort of midlife existential crisis, has the most inconsistency with his volume, but pulls off wearing shower curtains like a true fashion statement and is good with his entrances, exits, and doors slamming in his face.
It’s a knock-down-drag-out fight for who titillates the audience more in this production, P.B. (Amanda Matousek) or Harper (Joseph Downs.) And while the latter shows up rather late to the game, his impact on the production is hysterical. It’s unclear if the Harper character is written like eye-candy AI or if that’s a directorial choice, but either way Downs is slaying with this completely sentient and slightly aloof but ahead of his time type character. (The character actually reads a lot like the Kyle character from Legally Blonde and that makes it extra hysterical.) There is just something about the friendly, almost alien-computer-like detachment that Downs brings onto the stage that really gets the audience giggling through all of his interactions. On the other side of this competition, Matousek’s P.B is bratty, over the top, and an absolute replica of an under-16 80’s kid. (We’re guessing age because she’s got a Walkman, is doing house chores, has a decent handle on maturity, but claps back at her dad when he tells her to drive people someplace and she has to remind him that she doesn’t know how.) Matousek is vivacious and present, particularly when teasing at the scene, or whining over it, and although the lighting that gets used for her Walkman-induced dance moments doesn’t make any sense, she’s got bouncy energy when she starts dancing around.
The show has some incredible performances given and the set is really impressive. Lewis Black may not be a good playwright, but Bowie Community Theatre is giving it their best shot with this production of One Slight Hitch.
Running Time: 2 hours and 15 minutes with one intermission
One Slight Hitch plays through July 31, 2022 with Bowie Community Theatre at the Bowie Playhouse in White Marsh Park— 16500 White Marsh Park Drive in Bowie, MD. For tickets please call the box office at (301) 805-0219 or purchase them online.
