Theater Review—

A Killer Comedy Is Being Staged At Theater Works

By Julie Stern

HARTFORD — On Earth Day, when the weather had finally gotten around to being really pleasant, and the only place anyone wanted to be was outside, it was with heartfelt reluctance that we ventured up to Hartford to see a “killer comedy” set in a Florida retirement community.

Seeing a packed house consisting almost entirely of well tanned “snowbirds” who had just come north for the summer didn’t do much to raise our hopes, but as my husband likes to say, “Expect the worst, you won’t be disappointed.”

The term “pleasantly surprised” doesn’t begin to express how much we enjoyed the afternoon.

Playwright Jeffrey Hatcher, perhaps best known for Compleat Female Stage Beauty, has fashioned a trio of dramatic monologues or “talking heads” in which the three members of the cast each confide to the audience the story of how they became a murderer.

The time is the present; the place is Riddle Key, a Florida retirement community where well-heeled retirees from all over the country choose between luxury villas, well appointed condos, efficiency apartments, or – eventually – the dreaded “senior center,” a euphemism for a nursing home from which no one ever returns.

Gerald Halverson, played by Bill Kux, is a younger man who came to Riddle Key in order to marry his girlfriend’s mother, Spiff, in order to keep her estate from being swallowed up by death duties. He’s not a gigolo: the idea came from Spiff herself, when she learned she was terminally ill, but things get complicated when the local community doctor has some “good news” to tell them...

Donna Wandrey is Lucy Stickler,  who had forgiven her husband for cheating on her years ago with a vamp who made a practice of seducing every man in town,  only to learn that the same “other woman” has just moved in to a villa “three circles away.” Now her husband Bob has taken to watching his weight,  hiding Viagra in his golf bag, and going off to do frequent “volunteer work...”

Ann Talman is Minka Lupino, a great fan of murder mysteries and the assistant to the greedy sales manager of Riddle Key, whose sole purpose is to pressure the hapless elderly into giving up their lives back home and moving to Florida, where they will pay in advance for a five year lease that most of them won’t live to enjoy.

Whereas the intellectually liberal Gerald is trapped in a tangle of irony that only he can really appreciate, and the embittered and betrayed Donna is out for sweet revenge, Minka becomes a serial killer, as she tells us, in the interests of justice.

The entire show is hilariously funny, enhanced by acting that is as clever and nuanced as the writing is sharp. .However, it is in this third act that the comedy becomes laced with serious overtones. Minka is a good listener. People confide in her, without her asking them to, and in her frequent contact with the Riddle Key villagers who drop in to her office, ostensibly to upgrade or downgrade their living arrangements, she bears witness to a variety of cruelties, humiliations, and betrayals perpetrated on the elderly by health care personnel, store clerks, the police, and sometimes their own relatives. When she sees something she doesn’t like, Minka takes care of it!

As funny as it was, the play, under Steve Campo’s expert direction, does not flinch from the truths about life in the promised land of Florida. Lured by the sales pitch and the promise of never being cold, the people who buy up these color coordinated, lavishly landscaped “units” must face the fact that they are getting old, and frail, and sick. They are prey to loneliness and ripe for exploitation by predatory schemers.

The people around us were laughing knowingly at every reference, but they were laughing. They were having a great time, and so did we, and so, I think will you.