Acorn Studio Theater Hosts BEST ENEMIES

A tiny, sun-baked desert island. Two men. One hat. If that sounds like a recipe for trouble, it's all of that and more in Best Enemies, Michael Kimball's cowboy comedy, set to run at the Acorn Studio Theatre for two performances tonight  and Saturday, October 8th. Rex and Cody are lone survivors of a sabotaged rodeo cruise. To preserve their sanity, they've invented imaginary geography and instituted laws and punishments, but ultimately they go to war over their shared cowboy hat.

Best Enemies veers toward "magic realism," a genre of heightened realism in art and literature where fantastic elements appear unquestioned alongside the ordinary.

"I don't know if rodeo cruises exist or not-that's beside the point," says Kimball, the York author best known for his suspense novels Green Girls, Mouth to Mouth, and the best-selling Undone. "I started writing the play after seeing one of those age-old desert island cartoons, and it occurred to me that the reason the cartoon has been done a million different ways is because two people stranded together creates a powerful premise. So I started writing, with no intent other than to keep the play cartoonish. At the time, Brokeback Mountain was stretching the boundaries of the American western, so I made the guys western types-a rodeo clown and a homophobic rancher-which in itself charges the atmosphere with enough tension to drive twenty comedies. But it wasn't long before real life issues began creeping into the story-religion, politics, war-and pretty soon my cartoon cowboys began casting long shadows."

Rex, a grim loner haunted by a dark past, is played by Don Goettler, a newcomer to the Seacoast theatre scene, but a veteran New York actor who studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and danced with The Isadora Duncan Company. Goettler has appeared in Kimball's one-act plays Estrus in Amazonia and the historical dram Submit!, co-written with Jennifer Saunders.

Cody is a rodeo clown with a lust for conversation and a gnawing curiosity about his secretive island mate. Played by actor/playwright G. Matthew Gaskell, long seen on Seacoast-area stages, Cody has left behind a wild life of rodeos, saloons, and cowboy groupies. Like Goettler, Gaskell has appeared in previous Kimball plays-The Brownwater Legend, I Fall For You, and Hideaway.

Best Enemies premiered in Portsmouth in 2006, at The Players' Ring, to large audiences and glowing reviews. The Portland Phoenix called the show, directed by Lisa Stathoplos, "Sly, haunting, and remarkably fun . . . immensely entertaining." The Portsmouth Herald added "Smart, funny, poignant and creepy." Two years later the Freeport Players did a staged reading of the play, directed by Julie Goell.

"As soon as I met Don, I knew I wanted him and Greg to play these roles, but over the past two years I turned my energies to screenwriting and teaching. Then Leslie came along."

Leslie Pasternack, a theatre artist and educator based in Durham, first caught Kimball's eye with her solo show, Clean Room. Incorporating masked characters, Pasternack's work emphasizEd Strong physical choices and quirky, dark humor.

"I'll never forget that production," Kimball recalls. "About ten minutes into Clean Room, I knew that I had to work with Leslie, and a month later, when I saw a production of The Goat, or Who is Sylvia, that Leslie directed, I gave her a copy of Best Enemies and got her in the director's chair."

For her part, Pasternack was immediately drawn to the script's affectionate subversion of cowboy stereotypes. "Best Enemies has an intense life-or-death premise to start things rolling. But then it turns into a hilarious and rather tender examination of masculine behaviors--the good, the bad, and the ridiculous."

The Best Enemies cast is rounded out by a pair of mysterious night visitors played by Eve Mugar, an accomplishEd Smith College graduate whose most recent role was Hermione in The Winter's Tale; and stage and television actor Gregg Trzaskowski, whose last stage foray was in Kimball's Christmas comedy Santa Come Home, which ran at The Players' Ring in December 2009, and who also appeared in Kimball's plays The Secret of Comedy and the historical drama Submit!, co-written with Jennifer Saunders.

Best Enemies will run at the Acorn Studio Theater, located in the Dana Warp Mill, 90 Bridge St. in Westbrook, on October 7 and 8, with Friday and Saturday night performances beginning at 7:30p.m. Ticket prices are $15 for adults, $12 for students and seniors. Reservations (854-0065) are not required but highly recommended, and tickets may also be purchased on-line at www.acorn-productions.org

 

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