THEATER REVIEW
“Let Nothing You Dismay”
Grade: C+
Through Dec. 20. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays. $22-$30. North DeKalb Cultural Arts Center, 5339 Chamblee-Dunwoody Road, Dunwoody. 770-396-1726, www.stagedoorplayers.net.
Bottom line: Spreads itself a bit thin, despite laying it on rather thick.
The premise of Atlanta playwright Topher Payne's latest comedy, "Let Nothing You Dismay," might read as vaguely familiar or routine. It's situated on Christmas Eve in the waiting room of a hospital maternity ward, where an extended assortment of dysfunctional family members and sundry eccentric friends have gathered for the birth of Allie and Kevin's new baby.
What adds a certain punch to the proceedings is the gimmick of casting eight actors to play all 22 of Payne’s characters. Most of them are drawn in broad strokes, as madcap screwballs — and some of them are better defined than others, in director Shannon Eubanks’ production for Dunwoody’s Stage Door Players (which commissioned the show).
The incomparable Shelly McCook, for instance, shines in each of her three roles: as Kevin’s earthy mother, who abandoned him as a boy to start a New Age-y colony for artists; as his gregarious aunt, a Catholic nun; and as a little old lady, Allie’s feisty Jewish grandmother.
Elsewhere in the ensemble, Amanda Cucher has more fun as Kevin’s trophy stepmom, a former beauty queen, and as a caustic bohemian writer, than she does as Allie’s competitive sister, a brain surgeon. Gina Rickicki generates a lot of laughs as Kevin’s frozen-faced grandmother, but she’s less focused as Allie’s prim and proper mother or as a butch-y “childbirth companion.”
Ben Silver and Emily Sams have the rather thankless task of playing the comparatively normal (adoptive) parents-to-be, although they also get to let loose in isolated scenes as the spacey young surrogate couple whose biological aid Kevin and Allie enlist. Rounding out the cast in a handful of (mostly extraneous) other parts are Bryan Brendle, Mark Gray and Doyle Reynolds.
Despite the show’s many wig and costume changes (designed by George Devours and Jim Alford, respectively), it’s increasingly convoluted trying to keep track of so many characters and their numerous back stories and relationships.
While the play may be farcical in concept, Eubanks' sense of pacing is sluggish and off the mark that the director established and maintained so well in another locally written original comedy earlier this summer, Joshua Mikel's "Lillian Likes It" for Essential Theatre. (She also helmed Georgia Ensemble's premieres of Payne's "Swell Party" in 2013 and "The Only Light in Reno" in 2014, neither of which I saw.)
Of course, it’s physically impossible for any more than eight of the characters to be on stage at the same time. For all of the requisite activity that goes with the territory, the various entrances and exits never seem very quickly or sharply choreographed or orchestrated. It tends to disrupt the momentum rather than propel it, coming up with convenient excuses to get these characters off the stage so that those actors can reappear moments later in other roles.
That they are a mixed bag of nuts is part of the point, but “Let Nothing You Dismay” winds up being too unevenly pitched for its own good.
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