Smart Love
Reviewed by Terry Morgan
Pacific Resident Theatre
Extended through March 17
One of the hallowed maxims of writing teachers everywhere is: “Show, don’t tell.” Simply put, the actual experience of a thing is much more effective than simply hearing about it. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule (Swimming to Cambodia comes to mind), but it’s a solid one to follow overall. Brian Letscher, writer of Smart Love, now running at Pacific Resident Theatre, could have benefitted from this advice. In his play he attempts to create emotional resonance from a relationship that has already taken place and that the audience never sees. He’s only intermittently successful.
Recently widowed Sandy (Melissa Weber Bales) has found new love with church usher Victor (Scott Conte). She’s having a passionate evening with him when her adult son Benji (Zachary Grant) unexpectedly shows up in the middle of the night. Benji has abandoned his studies at MIT and has a mysterious package in tow. It turns out that he’s created an artificial intelligence version of his deceased father, Ron (Michael Mantell), that looks exactly like the man and is a genetic match for him. Benji thinks his mother will be thrilled at this creation and want to be together with her husband again, but Sandy is more horrified than impressed.
Bales does an admirable job of achieving the emotional contortions demanded of her character, and she brings intelligence and empathy to her performance. Grant plays Benji with amusing, crazed conviction, committing himself completely to the more outré aspects of the twisting plot. Conte does what he can as Victor, but the role is somewhat thin — a device used by the playwright to create a romantic triangle but never developed into a fully-fleshed character. Finally, Mantell does a fine job as Ron but seems somewhat miscast as a man who was supposedly an obsessed inventor: he seems so decorously nice that the idea that Ron was once a bad husband doesn’t quite land.
Director Elina de Santos gets good performances from her cast, but ultimately can’t overcome the infelicities of the script. There’s no getting past its contrivances — a romantic scene where Ron suddenly lures the heretofore repulsed Sandy into dancing with him to “Moon River,” or the silly moment when Ron lurches about as he abruptly gets a “download.” Letscher’s basic concept is solid — what is the actual definition of life? — but his execution is more mixed in quality. The show tries for more laughs than it garners, and it doesn’t seem quite certain whether it’s a comedy or something much darker. For example, Benji, as written, is megalomaniacal and controlling, and Ron threatens the less powerful humans in his presence a couple of times. This places the story just a small step away from being dark drama or horror — which might have been a more effective road for this work to travel.
The main problem, however, is that this show depends on the audience’s investment in a relationship that is literally dead by the time they’re introduced to it. It’s discussed at length in the past tense, which automatically distances the viewers and ultimately makes the emotional catharsis at the play’s conclusion feel unearned.
Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd., Venice; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; extended through Mar. 17. www.pacificresidenttheatre.com. Running time: approximately one hour and 43 minutes with no intermission.
