BWW Reviews: Paragon Theatre's PARLOUR SONG - a Delight!

PARLOUR SONG, directed by ensemble member Suzanne Favette, is a funny and thought provoking play that deals with the ups and downs of living in suburbia. Ned is married to Joy and trudging through life along with his next door neighbor and best friend Dale. While Ned's away, the other two will play. Truth, consequences, and kleptomania abound in this darkly humorous tale of marriage, paranoia, and one man's midlife crisis.

Let it be known henceforth that playwright Jez Butterworth is an unrivaled master of metaphors! Metaphor #1: The drought in England = desperate marital dehydration, including a parched lack
of slippery, liquid passion. Metaphor #2: The supermarket where Joy does all of her shopping being torn down by her demolitions expert husband = obsolete, worn out, eroding, crumbling
marriage. Metaphor #3: Joy is obsessed with lemons. She dreams about them. Lemony language
invades her speech at every turn. Puckery fruit = Joy's passion, confined in a place of sour
sorrow, welling up inside her. Her husband's best friend Dale is the sugar that soothes the bitter
aftertaste. You get the picture.

The veteran cast carries a sense of comfort with each other and plays off one another well. As car
wash chain owner Dale, Michael Stricker brings the funny. The workout scene with him and Ned
is truly hilarious (leg lifts are "instantly awful, instantly wrong!") Warren Sherrill portrays out of
shape Ned, the tortured, deep-feeling, sleep and sex deprived husband of Joy. Sherrill has a good
grasp on the emotional range that is needed for his role, traversing multiple emotional levels
from denial to paranoia. Emily Paton Davies is delightful as bored Joy. Her transformation from
lonely housewife to sexually voracious vixen is mesmerizing. (Metaphor #4: Lemon dreams =
good, juicy sex!)

As far as ambiance, lilting classical piano notes greeted us as we entered the theater, so vivid and
so rich that I had no doubt someone was tickling the ivories somewhere just beyond my range
of vision. Love, love, love what scenic designer Taylor Dykstra did with the backdrop of three
cookie cutter houses, so often found in modern suburbia. (Metaphor #5: Ned + Joy = mundane,
perfunctory, drab life.) Dykstra and the crew even went so far as to surround the set with a white
picket fence. (Metaphor #6: White picket fence = assumed relational bliss or are the walls closing in on them. Um. Yeeeah. Okay.) Multimedia effects = excellent subtle nuance to support the cast and the emotional meltdowns that are inevitable in a story about the corrosion of love and lifelong commitment. PARLOUR SONG is a hymn to what once was and a belted ballad about what could be.

Paragon Theatre ends its 10th anniversary season on a high note! PARLOUR SONG plays
until October 29th. For tickets or information, contact Paragon's box office at 303-300-2210 or
online at www.paragontheatre.org.

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