BWW Reviews: Schmeater's SEASCAPE Evolves into Quirky Fun

What would you do if a human sized, English speaking lizard walked up to you on the beach? How about two of them? Well get ready for that experience as Theater Schmeater explores two different sides of evolution in Edward Albee's "Seascape". And while it takes a bit of time for the show to evolve as well, once it does it's a quirky fun time.

It's time for Nancy and Charlie (Katherine Woolverton and Paul Custodio) to enjoy their retirement years. The kids are all grown up and now it's a chance for them to evolve into the next phase of their lives. But while Nancy wants to explore and see all life has to offer, Charlie wants to just do nothing. Suddenly in the midst of their examination of what to do next they encounter Leslie and Sarah (Josh Ryder and Lori Lee Haener), two lizards who are looking to leave the ocean behind and become land dwellers. As the two species discuss each other's differences we also see the similarities of each of their excitement as well as fear of change.

It's the typical Albee with biting dialog flying every which way but unfortunately in Act One it wasn't quite flying fast enough. The pace felt slow and way too polite as the dialog didn't overlap from line to line in standard Albee fashion. This pace sapped much of the energy from the Act as Nancy and Charlie discussed their lives. And without that pace and more levels in the conversation it tended to drone on a bit. But then the energy picked up greatly once the lizard couple arrived and the show found its way to much more solid ground.

Custodio and Woolverton are enjoyable enough and have wonderful stage presence but it was their scenes that lacked that pace and so I found it difficult to get behind what they were discussing. Ryder and Haener on the other hand bring much more vibrancy and interesting characterizations to their roles. Not only are they much more complex characters but both bring some quite interesting physical and facial variations, making both of them absolutely fascinating to watch.

It can't be easy to share the stage with a couple of talking lizards but when Albee's entire first Act is devoted to the humans then they should at least be as interesting as the lizards. But those lizards were quite engaging and really picked up the show which is why, with my three letter rating system, I'm giving "Seascape" a MEH+. It's still an interesting piece of Albee's if you haven't seen it, just not as consistent throughout.

"Seascape" performs at Theater Schmeater through October 11th. For tickets or information visit them online at www.schmeater.org.

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