Eric Daniel Weiner
Reviewed by Lovell Estell III
Hollywood Fringe Festival at the Broadwater
Through June 27
Second chances do not always come around in life, and if you are talking about a second round with the gal you adored but shunned 50 years ago, count your blessings.
That is the story that Eric Daniel Weiner shares with his audience in his one-man show. “I want to tell you about an amazing thing that happened to me,” he starts out.
Weiner’s days at an exclusive prep school in New Hampshire were spent on his schoolwork, but Cupid had other plans, and when he enrolled in a class on Shakespeare’s sonnets, he was struck with the arrow.
Her name was Sally, and Weiner humorously details the stirrings of his first “love”, and the changes that he went through. But the thrill started to wane, and the pair soon graduated and went their separate ways.
Weiner became a lawyer, got married, had four kids, and was apparently happy. But that ended when his wife read some truly ugly things that he had written about her in his diary, like “I wish she would die in a plane crash.”
Years later, after a divorce and now living alone, he decided to take a trip to seacoast town. And there Sally was, fifty years after their last encounter, divorced and the head of a foundation. After some awkward moments, they reconnected, for what seemed to be a happy ending.
Weiner is a good storyteller, and he has a real knack for channeling characters. The narrative too often drags, however, because Weiner gets lost in minute details and tends to ramble. Also, he uses chairs as props and spends way too much time shuffling them about, which after a time is hugely distracting.
The Broadwater Studio, 1078 Lillian Way; Hollywood. A Hollywood Fringe Festival show; for info visit https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/13850 Running time: one hour.
