Raconteur Reviews
Thursday, June 12th, 2008Check out this from The Other Paper and our other review at Ohio News Network. And come out for the show- this is the FINAL WEEKEND!
~Jill
“Two short plays about love on its last legs”
BY RICHARD ADES
The Other Paper, June 5, 2008
If it weren’t for the buzz of conversation filtering in from the next room, you might think you were back at 2Co’s Cabaret.
The Raconteur Theatre Company is making its debut with a double bill that includes Douglas Hill’s Roulette, the kind of relationship play that often kept viewers entertained at the now-defunct cabaret. Adding to the illusion is the presence of J.T. Walker, a ponytailed actor who was sometimes seen at the Short North venue.
Walker plays Matt, a Tucson resident who has been no more successful at marriage than he has been at finding a career. When wife Janine (Jill Ceneskie) pushes his buttons once too often, he decides to hit the road for Las Vegas.
Only one problem: Matt doesn’t have enough money to get there. After some arguing, Janine decides to take him, if only to get him out her life once and for all.
So the two drive off, which is when things start to get weird. Matt begins finding wads of dollar bills in his formerly empty wallet, while their junky car seems to sip gas at a rate that would make a Prius jealous. These and other unexplained occurrences make Janine suspect the universe is trying to tell them something, but Matt, for reasons he keeps to himself, is in no mood to listen.
Working under Tricia T. Jones’s skilled direction, Walker isn’t bad as a man who has trouble expressing himself, though his craft was sometimes too obvious on opening night. Ceneskie is more natural as Janine, a woman whose attitude toward her difficult husband can change from anger to protectiveness to affection within a span of seconds.
Marital tug of war: Jill Ceneskie and J.T. Walker in the Raconteur Theatre Company’s production of Roulette. Photo by Sam Blythe
The same can’t be said for the other play on the After the Afterglow double bill, Justin Toomey’s Aster, Holger Gunn. An original work by a Raconteur board member, the one-act begins promisingly enough but eventually falls apart.
Like Roulette, Aster looks at romance past its prime. It’s a credit to Toomey’s dialogue- writing skill that the play initially captures viewers’ interest despite relying on that most self-conscious of gimmicks author who has a conversation with his own characters.
Andrew Cronacher is good as the writer who tries to come to terms with a failed romance by creating a stand-in for his former lover. Molly St. Cyr is nearly as good as the vaguely mocking stand-in, except that her soft voice is sometimes hard to hear above the scraps of conversation drifting over from the other side of the host coffeehouse.
Though a mixture of psychology and philosophy makes the pair’s early conversation interesting, Toomey then commits the error I of introducing a third character (Sam Blythe) who seems totally superfluous. The play goes downhill from there.
The work’s saving grace is that it doesn’t take long to see it-if you decide to see it at all. One nice thing about Raconteur’s freshman effort is that it doesn’t force viewers to attend both halves of the double bill. Pay $5 (rather than $8) and you can leave early after seeing Roulette - or arrive late and see only the briefly interesting Aster.
Either way, you get the chance to sample Columbus’s newest theater company for a minimal outlay of time and money. If you’re like me, the experience will leave you eager to spend more time with the group in the coming months.
The Raconteur Theatre Company will present the After the Afterglow double bill through June 14 at Kafe Kerouac, 2250 N. High St. Roulette will be presented at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; Aster, Holger Gunn, at 9:15 p.m. Thursday-Saturday. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes (both plays, plus intermission). Tickets are $5 for one play, $8 for both. 614-804-1695 or http://raconteurthetre.com
