joe_haldeman @ 2012-03-07T13:22:00

Last night we went to see an amusing play at the Hippodrome, Tom Dudzick's Over the Tavern.

It's a family comedy that's a veritable zoo of potential clichés – a well-meaning stern nun is on the case of the main character, who's a middle-school kid who just wants to have fun, whose mother is overworked and frazzled, and whose father is overworked and frazzled and handicapped, and whose sister is frazzled and freaking out with adolescence.  His older brother floats in and out, frazzled.  The nun comes over to talk to mom and dad about the misbehaving kid, and the holy water hits the fan when she has some sort of attack and faints.

The acting was good, especially the kid, played by eighth-grader Paxton Sanchez, who did a lot of well-felt reacting to the mysterious adult situation unfolding around him.  He also had several soliloquies in between scenes, talking to God, which could have been cutesy or cloying, but worked pretty well.

The nun, Sara Morsey, walked a careful line between the expected and the easily invented.  Her part would be the easiest one to fall into stock-character simplicity, but she brought a nice measure of empathy and uncertainty to it, and connected well with young Sanchez.

The thing all fits together like an old-fashioned wooden puzzle, but for me it stopped too soon, leaving loose ends dangling.  (Gay didn't think so.)   Google says there's a sequel.  I'd pay to see it.

Joe