Review: STAGE KISS at Harrison Players

As the audience had settled in their seats to take in the Harrison Players’ limited-run production of Sarah Ruhl’s Stage Kiss (in Harrison, N.Y.), I took note of one crew member on stage who was stretched out on a couch. That’s odd, I thought. As other stage hands began to move about, casually bantering with each other, I asked the person next to me, “Is it starting?” She said, “Yes, this is the play.” You could have fooled me. In fact, for a moment or two, it did fool me. 

That neatly sums up Sarah Ruhl’s intended subtext: “Are you sure you know the difference between artifice and reality?” As Ms. Ruhl goes about her business bending the rules of how life co-exists with art, there are few tropes of theater culture that the author doesn’t acknowledge, using throw-away lines, but always conveying an underlying love and respect for the ancient art form and its tribal customs. 

Coming to terms with the often blurry line between life and art, between reality and fantasy, is what the eminently talented Ms. Ruhl explores in this superior and eccentric comedy about life in the theater, which doubles as social commentary on how we navigate the relationships that define our existence. 

The real-life Harrison Players’ actors cast in Stage Kiss have a tall order: they need to slide smoothly between playing comically bad actors who are in a play-within-the-play (a laughably awful 1930s not-very-mellow melodrama) and playing the characters in that play. All complete their dual tasks to sparkling effect.

Theater folk in a Stage Kiss audience readily recognize familiar moments from their own experience on the boards, such as a director instructing the cast to ignore the script’s stage directions (a not uncommon occurrence), or telling  an actor who's upset about being drenched with water to “use it,“ not to mention the oft-heard directorial dictum to actors about needing “to go to dark places.” That's right: an actor's demons are their best friends when it comes to -- in legendary acting teacher Sanford Meisner's words -- "living truthfully under imaginary circumstances."  

As Stage Kiss opens, using an audition as her point of entry, Ms. Ruhl dives headfirst into her conceit of affording us a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how badly some actors, playing a character, act, and how badly some actors, as their real selves, behave. 

As lead character “She,” the wondrous Amanda Bloom barges into the audition, apologizing for being late, and proceeds to become a hotter mess as the audition stumbles along.

Opposite her as the other actor auditioning is Kevin Arthur (as Kevin and other roles), who is marvelous as a thoroughly inept actor whose idea of a kiss bears a striking resemblance to a big-mouth bass yawning. Mr. Arthur's wordless moments are priceless, evoking for me the masterly mime Bill Irwin. 

“She” and Kevin repeat that audition kissing scene again and again, under the watchful eye of avuncular Charles Favara, as the play’s director, who seems to making it up as he goes along. Mr. Favara skillfully and comedically captures the kind of shaky directorial persona that many an actor has encountered.

Once cast, at the first rehearsal, “She” is flummoxed to find out her co-star is none other than her ex, named (what else?) “He,” brought to vivid and rakish life by Danny Charest. He and Ms. Bloom (pictured here) make an impactful one-two punch, both bringing strong stage presence, comic timing and sustained energy to their assignments. Their chemistry – which runs hot and cold, per the script – is palpable.

The real-life director of Stage Kiss, Anthony Valbiro, has brought his reliably effective stagecraft instincts to this production. While performing the 1930s play, “She,” “He” and others elicit rolling laughter with their absurdly articulated physical movements, notably a lot of acting from the head up. 

The more “He” and “She” kiss on stage, the more they both give in to the gravity of falling back in love (a condition famous for being confused at times with lust). 

That brings us to Act II, where “He” and “She” have become We off-stage, leaving “She’s” husband – the versatile and unfailingly engaging Adam Bloom – to suddenly take an understudy role in the marriage, waiting in the wings, as it were. Helping to put things in perspective is their daughter Angela. In that role, Carlie Zucker totally nails a monologue – one long, run-on sentence – where she is dressing down “He” as a bad actor and all-around asshole. 

Taryn Comizio also is praiseworthy in her dual roles as Millicent in Act I and as He’s girlfriend Laurie in Act II. Bill Halliburton, Kevin Eccleston and Ken Skjeveland fill out the stellar cast as Stage Hands.

A nice flourish is having musician Blake Rowe at his keyboard downstage right for the first Act, playing music that includes his original compositions. 

As the second act unspools, Sarah Ruhl raises the stakes of conflating artifice with reality. At one point, it appears as if the stage hands are moving furniture around in “He’s” apartment, only for it to emerge that “He’s” real-life furniture in fact is somehow part of the set of a new play that “He“ and “She” are rehearsing. The writer deftly uses sleight-of-hand to, in effect, shape-shift what we’re seeing – where does an actor’s character end and their true self begin? Isn’t our home furniture just so many props? 

Ms. Ruhl also is offering social commentary about the human condition. She points out that marriage (like stage acting) is about repetition, whereas romance is not about repetition. (Perhaps romance is more akin to artifice?) 

There are any number of analyses that could be made about the layers of meaning in Stage Kiss (plumbing a character's layers is a core discipline in the actor’s toolkit). 

For now, I’ll go with the layer that Stage Kiss is telling us – in a deliriously diverting way – that life itself, after all is said and done, is an act. All the world’s a stage, indeed. 

Stage Kiss was performed for one weekend in October 2024 by The Harrison Players. It was impressively executive produced by Jennifer Ricci and Pat Tisi.

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[This is a gentle note to producers of local theater that I am attaching to my reviews: In addition to featuring playwrights and directors in the marketing materials promoting your productions, please remember also to promote cast members by listing the actors’ names in the same materials. Doing so can help fill seats by those who recognize a familiar name and buy a ticket to see and support that person.]

 

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