Laurie Kilpatrick (Photo by Connor A-K)
Reviewed by Martίn Hernández
Theatre 68
Through November 23
“I like furniture and I still like people,” are the main reasons writer/performer Laurie Kilpatrick embarked on her adventure in retail sales at Furniture World in 2020– that and the five-minute commute, the 401k, and health insurance. Those perks were a godsend to a 60-something Los Angeles-based actor with a modicum of financial security, a spouse, and a son finishing college. However, the Covid-19 pandemic would soon put all that at risk just weeks into new job.
Kilpatrick has adapted a blog she wrote during that troubled time into a one-person show, directed by Barbara Stewart Allen. Despite her promising concept and genial personality, her script is an underdeveloped hodge-podge of witty, sad, and uplifting tales of her dealings with assorted clientele. These snippets whiz by with scant time for Kilpatrick to flesh out the coterie of offbeat characters she meets and to highlight her apparent talent at characterization, accents, and comic timing. For example, she starts with one story about how one customer helped lighten her day but does not explain how. Kilpatrick also jumps from one bit to another without fleshing out the previous one and letting its humor or pathos fully play out.
At first, Kilpatrick is excited about her new gig, feeling she provides a valued service for the store’s “guests” searching for their dream furniture. When Covid-19 hits and California declares a lockdown, however, Kilpatrick’s enthusiasm is strained as those esteemed “guests” take their frustrations out on her. While she endured some customers, like a wealthy and privileged father’s guilt-tripping Kilpatrick over his daughter’s malady to speed up the standard delivery time, she embraced others, like the one whose friend damaged his couch in a shocking and disturbing manner. In a mid-pandemic shift, Kilpatrick is assigned to field customer service calls at home for a few months, juggling complaints and sales orders with a mix of frustration and aplomb.
Allen and Kilpatrick have placed myriad fluorescent notes neatly tacked up on both sides of the stage, giving workplace milieu to the minimalist set and possibly serving as mini cue cards for the multitude of stories. Kilpatrick’s constant perusal of those notes and her apparent effort to keep track of the storyline stifles a potentially nuanced and coherent piece of timely and heartfelt theatre.
Theatre 68, Beckett Theatre, 5112 Lankershim Blvd., N. Hollywood.; Sun., 2:30 pm; thru Nov. 23. https://tinyurl.com/2ykftnzn Running time: one hour
