“Skin Deep” at Good Company Players goes beneath the surface and succeeds

 

Can good acting and directing save a poor script?  For the most part, in the cast of Skin Deep at Good Company Players, the answer is a resounding yes.

So lets just get the script elements out of the way, shall we?  Skin Deep by Jon Lonoff feels a little. . . dusty.  It depends upon the box set, sitcom style format common to mainstream theater in the 1980’s and feels about as fresh as an episode of “One Day at a Time”.

Don’t get me wrong, “One Day at a Time” had some great characters and the zingers to bring on the laughs, but at its heart it lacked the emotional support to keep the comedy real.  Skin Deep can suffer from those same sitcom effects: lots of rapid-fire self-deprecation, the emotional relationships between the characters are muted in favor of zippy punch-lines, and a difficulty in identifying characters’ motivations for actions other than the demands of the script.  It also has the feel of a script written in the early 80’s and redrawn for a 21st century audience.  A few references and jokes were confusing in that it’s hard to pin down what time period they’re in.

But still, there is enough hanging on its bones that an intelligent director and a talented cast can flesh out on their own.

At the center of the talented cast is Kristin Lyn Crase as Maureen Mulligan, an overweight woman trying desperately to fend off the attempts of her picture perfect sister, Sheila (Ashley Taylor), to marry her off.  For the most part, Maureen seems like a happy person—save one area of her romantic past with which she hasn’t quite come to terms and which she may cling to her weight in order to avoid in the future. And this is the first place I applaud Crase’s choices as an actor and the production’s choices as a whole:  so often the overweight are portrayed as bitter sad-sacks with no desire to enter into the world.  Crase’s Maureen likes her job, has a cute (if slightly sloppy) apartment, and does her hair and owns nice clothes.  This characterization alone is a braver choice than the easy, but ultimately unsatisfying, portrayal of a plump, bitter mouse.

Crase’s Maureen is good-humored, warm and deeply self-aware, able to feel and acknowledge her emotions even as she may be casting them aside with food or jokes.  The specificity with which she chooses her actions and her line deliveries in this performance is far more than the script gives her.  We are, perhaps, seeing a character with whom this actor is intimately acquainted. Crase rises above the material with a grace and freshness that carries the audience along with her.

The ensemble also elevates the material with their serious and heartfelt comedic work.  This is a group that obviously likes each other and that sense of togetherness translates to the family structure on the stage.

Taylor as Sheila is particularly snappy and on the ball in her portrayal of a tightly-wound, insecure wife and mother obsessed with maintaining her youthful looks.  She moves like a tigress, her svelty curves in high heels saying as much about her character as her line delivery.  Her best laughs come at the moment her character reveals the real pain in her life, her mask slipping to show Sheila’s insecure impulses.

“The Davids” (David Marinovich as Squire, Sheila’s overly flirtatious husband and David Chavarria as Joe, Maureen’s blind date) work their way into the story’s fabric under the radar, but then bubble to the surface with some finely drawn character development.  If a few of their bits come off a little stage-y (a tentative kiss that’s a little too drawn out and a very chaste hug creating all kinds of havoc between the sisters), it is excusable considering their novice status as local actors.  Given their experience level they do some really terrific work on the whole.

Which is probably due to the finely-tuned direction of J. Daniel Herring.  Herring has taken the best of the sitcom tv tropes and used them to good effect with the humor of this play, but also guided his cast toward creating—almost out of thin air– the real emotion under the surface of each character. He takes the personal issues brought forth by this play seriously, not just as a running gag. This technique is what gives this mediocre script real structure and substance and makes this production a truly outstanding offering.

Skin Deep runs at Good Company Player’s 2nd Space Theater now til August 7th.  http://gcplayers.com/2nd-space-theatre