"Seascape " is well worth seeing

By Bob Goepfert
The Record

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"Seascape"

Usually when a theater company produces a "neglected masterpiece," I tend to cringe. Too often that means they are producing a bad play by a great writer that would be better off ignored.

I am happy to say that Hubbard Hall’s production of Edward Albee’s rarely produced "Seascape" is well worth seeing.

Despite winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1975, "Seascape" is not a great play, but it is a charming piece of well-performed theater that offers an interesting and good time. If you can wrap your head around the idea of Edward Albee writing a whimsical play, that play is "Seascape."

Its premise is simple even if the play isn’t. An older couple lounge on a beach where they are joined by a pair of lizards who have the ability to speak and to intellectualize. The lizard couple engage the human couple in discussions about being human and inquire about such things as emotions, mating, child-raising and monogamy.

Though the discussions are often very funny, the talk is never silly. For example, one character defines progress as "a set of assumptions." For some playwrights that thought would drive an entire play. In "Seascape," Albee uses it as a throwaway joke line.

Director Laura Heidinger does a great job in keeping the work focused and, for the most part, avoids the pitfall of making Albee’s writing seem too dense. However, she cannot do much to overcome the overwritten first 20 minutes of the play.

Despite very good work by Stephanie Moffett Hynds and Richard Howe as the older couple the opening is slow and tends towards Albee-like lecturing. It doesn’t help the performers that they are a decade too young to play Charlie and Nancy. At Hubbard Hall, they are a couple going through a mid-life crisis rather than a couple reflecting on an entire life spent together. It lessens their comparison to the more innocent still-learning lizard couple.

The age-factor diminishes the play rather than hurting, however, it as Howe and Hynds offer strong performances in catalyst roles. Besides, once the lizards arrive we stop noticing the humans. Costumed in sensational lizard suits designed by Karen Koziol, the pair infuse life into a stagnant situation. Who’d have thought the most endearing portrait of a compassionate caring couple seen so far this year would come from a pair of lizards?

Where Charlie and Nancy are dull and tired, Leslie and Sarah are energetic and alive. Doug Ryan infuses Leslie with a curious mind and a funny view of the world. Courtney King as Sarah is gentle, probing and wise. Together they are an amphibious Adam and Eve who are clearly ready to go to the next rung of the evolutionary ladder. The tastiness of "Seascape" is it questions whether, if given the choice, they should move up the ladder to become Charlie and Nancy.

"Seascape" is that kind of a play. It has you laugh yourself into a conundrum as director Heidinger keeps the balance between light and heavy from tipping too far to either side. This is a very smart, well-acted worked that is given superior technical support.

Interestingly, the work is the opening production for the company’s new black box theater. The new space is part of Hubbard Hall’s own evolution process as it starts to work more outside its traditional performing space.

Choosing "Seascape" for its first show offers awareness the company knows success is not about the past or the future but can be found by offering good work in the present. And this is good work.