THEATRE REVIEW: "The Good Times are Killing Me" @ The Mustard Seed Theatre

BY: ANDREA BRAUN, THEATRE ARTS CORRESPONDENT

There are 18 actors in The Good Times are Killing Me, and that’s a lot of people to wrangle in the small black box at Fontbonne, the home of Mustard Seed Theatre. Fortunately, director Deanna Jent is a past master at crowd control as she showed us in Measure of Measure. Here though, the many tend to overwhelm the few too often. The play seems busy and unfocused at times. Big events are glossed over and details that would make us feel more for the characters are missing.

Edna Arkins (Colleen Backer) narrates the story of the summer she was 12, a year she identifies as 1966. However, the clothes, while well designed by Jane Sullivan, look more like they’d be appropriate about five years earlier. Music underpins the tale and is enormously important in detailing family life, friendship, and growing up in general, yet it is as if the British never invaded. How can a piece set in ’66 ignore The Beatles, among many others? Barry is prone to anachronism too, using expressions such as "psych" ("gotcha") and "As if" (Valley Girl-speak). Maybe this vague temporal orientation is to give a sense of "The ‘60s," rather than a really specific time, but it just gave me mental vertigo.

Anyway, if Lennon and McCartney are missing from the soundtrack, the set and lighting designers, Dunsi Dai and Glenn Dunn, seem like the John and Paul of stagecraft: Their work is always good, often great and occasionally amazing. Here, by my count, three homes, two cars, a school, a church, a backyard, a tenement, and the woods are all depicted with very little fuss and not much distracting shifting around of props. It’s an awesome achievement.

Backer and Briston Ashe (as Bonna) actually play 12-year-olds, and they pull it off. Ashe more than just portrays her part; however, I was very close to her at several points, and I believed wholeheartedly that I was looking into the face of a child. Backer doesn’t get upstaged often, but it happens here. Ashe is absolutely authentic in every role I’ve seen her play (even a dog once!) and this part is no exception.

This is an excellent cast, and most are familiar to regular St. Louis theatergoers. But it seems that Barry thought the more ingredients, the better the stew. Not so.While Kim Furlow and B. Weller are very funny as Aunt Margaret and Uncle Don Arkins, why do they need to be there? Christopher Hickey and Kirsten Wylder as Edna’s parents and Katie Donnelly as her five-year-old sister, Lucy, provide enough context. The couple’s financial and marital problems might then get the time they deserve. Casting Donnelly, another adult, as a five-year-old works at times and she plays her part well, but somehow it just seemed too contrived to me, thus a distraction.

Bonna’s family could also use more attention to story development. The most dramatic personal event in the play happens to them, but we don’t have a chance to feel it with them. Robert Mitchell and Margery Handy are her parents; Kareem Deanes and Toni Roper, her younger brother and aunt, respectively. Again, all are fine actors with too few chances to show us what they can do.

The "neighborhood" (Tim Norman, Rory Lipede, Natasha Toro, Valleri Dillard, plus some of the above-named actors in dual roles) serves mostly as "atmosphere," and again, causes unfortunate shifts in focus. Certainly the community is key to a story which derives much of its import from the issue of race relations (even Edna’s jumper is a vivid black and white plaid). The Civil Rights Act changed the law but not the people’s feelings, and certainly the bigotry we see lightly depicted here is legitimate, but there’s no novelty in that by 1966. Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965; Martin Luther King, Jr. was not exactly obscure. I’m not saying 12-year-olds should talk about the civil rights movement and its leaders per se, but there needs to be an awareness that there has been a major cultural shift.

Now, I can also argue with myself that these are the memories of a 12-year-old. This is how she saw things at the time. She may not have been aware of how much her mother was suffering, for example, but she seems awfully perceptive in other ways, such as when she has an epiphany about the power of music after attending services with Bonna’s family or musing on how seventh grade is another country. The same kids are there but the dynamics are forever altered. Her adult self speaks of "A song we listened to when things were still normal and I never noticed they were." Here it’s clear who is commenting, but sometimes it’s hard to tell whether the insights presented are the child’s or the adult’s.

Edna is no Scout Finch in terms of native wisdom, but she also has no Atticus to teach her. Bonna is wiser in the ways of the world because she has had to be, so in a way, she is Edna’s mentor. The ending isn’t altogether satisfying, but unlike much of the rest of the play, it rings true.

The audience clearly enjoyed the show, and despite the flaws I’ve noted here, so did I. I love seeing good actors, directors and designers ply their crafts. But I’d rather see them in a show that is worthy of their considerable gifts.

runs through May 3, 2009 at the Fontbonne University Fine Arts Theatre. For tickets or information, call the Mustard Seed Theatre office at 314-719-8060 or visit www.mustardseedtheatre.com. The Thursday performance on April 23 is "Pay What You Can Or Pay With A Can" night with proceeds donated to local food pantries.

You can e-mail Andrea at andreabraun@live.com