ANY FAMOUS LAST WORDS run dates: 7/10/2008 - 7/20/2008 Richmond Hill Barn Theatre, Geneseo, Illinois ____________________________________________________________________________
Billed as a "comedy in two acts by Nancy Pahl Gilsenan," ANY FAMOUS LAST WORDS is the latest show to be produced by the Richmond Hill Players. Keep in mind, however, that billing is sometimes hype rather than accurate description.
Not, of course that the quoted phrase in the first sentence of this review is a complete fiction.
I believe the show was written by Pahl Gilsenan, and it is indeed played in two acts. But the part about it being a comedy? Well, that’s just a lie.
Lest you think the play – which concerns a successful (though not necessarily good) playwright who is hospitalized – is a drama, let me hasten to correct that assumption. ANY FAMOUS LAST WORDS is definitely not a drama, either. And unless you count the fact that the show has been produced at all – and in front of a paying audience, no less – it is no tragedy either.
The Richmond Hill Players, whose shows usually range somewhere from decent to absolutely excellent, have produced a stinker of the first water this time around.
So bad, in fact, is ANY FAMOUS LAST WORDS, that it is difficult to tell where Pahl Gilsenan left off and director Joseph R. DePauw began. Neither can be proud of the result – and I’m sure the actors involved here will not be including this one on their resumes, ever. (None will appreciate me naming names in this review either, I’m sure.)
Jackie Skiles appears as Lucy Sisson, the playwright whose medical issue has enforced a stint in the hospital has supposedly triggered reflection of some sort. Though Skiles has done fine work elsewhere (and struggled mightily to do so here), she has nothing to work with and no one to play off of. The poor woman doesn’t stand a chance in a "comedy" where the only funny character is one who only calls in by phone – and whose words on the other end of the conversation are never heard by the audience.
Barbara McAbee is awful as Sada Ing, who (I believe) is intended to be the eccentric best friend-slash-conscience for the lead. McAbee is (if such a thing is possible here) woefully miscast as Sada, and the resulting character is one who is most likely to prompt applause when she leaves the stage.
Even the mega-talented Spiro Bruskas (who struggled with lines opening weekend – and who wouldn’t, given what he is expected to say?) can’t begin to save this turkey, and neither can Sandy Stoltenberg, whose brief cameo is a tiny glimmer of light in a hopeless mass of clouds.
Even the show’s staging is sub-par. I mean, why would anachronisms like a typewriter (or the lack of Blackberry, a cell phone or something) be in "the present," anyway?
There isn’t single reader or group I can recommend this show to, but please go back to Richmond Hill in August. There’s no way lightning like this can strike twice.
