Airport Encounters

Reviewed by Gray Palmer

Lounge Theatre

Through October 16

This collage of ten scenes at an airport gate is a modest stage equivalent of a book of cartoons, where none of the laughter is tough and there’s nothing really dangerous, the TSA is absent, and there’s no watch-list in the foreground. The “others,” when they appear, are soft images of an Amish couple(!), or somebody wrongly identified (with no consequences) as the “menacing other,” who turns out to be “just like us.” The encounters in this airport lounge avoid any hint of a threatening state authority and all that follows. So much for the real comedy of air travel.

And as too often happens in the theater, we seem to have been deposited into some kind of parallel TV-universe.

Is it a matter of the dyer’s hand? The eight writers of Airport Encounters describe themselves in the program bios, variously, as screenplay analyst, journalist, marketing consultant, producer of “hours of programming for major networks,” author of a comfort-food recipe book, studio copywriter, and so on… Everybody from this writers’ room has been marching in the industry parade. So you’d think — well, there must be a freaked-out, antic chorus in there. With some desperate thought (past the nightmares of inconvenience) about what fuels the nightmares of flight — and maybe a crazy notion about the sane possiblities of public transportation.

But the shiny button-endings of all ten scenes in Airport Encounters make familiar gestures toward moral instruction, self-help, or comic distraction (of the “look at the lovable eccentric” variety).

The opening night audience immediately understood its role and performed it, making noises like a TV studio audience, including, twice, a group “Aw” at a heartwarming kiss or hug.

Given all that… given all that… The opening moments deploy most of the cast (I counted 21) in walk-throughs for the convincing illusion of a busy airport. The very large company is attractive and good. My favorites of the evening: Carol Herman (expert calm deadpan), David St. James and Kathleen Cecchin (as the Amish couple in a sketch by Nancy Van Iderstine that involves Amish appropriation of blackisms), Nicole Rochell and Brandon Meyer in “Stuck” by Scott Mullen (a fantasy about a disoriented, de-mobilized soldier that resembles a Twilight Zone episode — until it finishes with one of those sweet-button conclusions). An audience favorite seemed to be “Therapy Dog” (actors as puppies), also by Scott Mullen, featuring Steve Oreste, Anthony Marquez, and Mimi Umidon.

The artistic director of Neo Ensemble is Paul Elliott (the buck stops there). The directors of Airport Encounters are Joe Ochman and Richard Pierce. The costumes are good — there’s no program credit for design, so congratulations to the longsuffering performers for dressing yourselves. The set (by Christopher Soley) is good. The Lounge continues to have flickering lights on that rear stage.

Lounge Theatre, 6201 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; Fri.-Sat. 8 pm.; Sun. 2 pm.; through October 16. neoensembletheatre.org . Running time: two hours and 10 minutes with intermission