Theater Review: Morning After Grace

SARASOTA – Well before Walter Lippman and John Dewey laid the foundations of modern communications studies, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, "Quidquid recipitur secundum modum recipientis recipitur.“ In other words, your message must be targeted to your audience. In Morning After Grace at the Asolo Repertory Theater, the piece and the audience are perfectly matched for a night of comedy and seduction.

The small ensemble piece tells the story of three characters, people of a certain age. Retired, alone and aging. Two of the principals meet at a funeral: the widower and a grief counselor, who was mistakenly in the wrong place. The lives of all three characters were not perfect. In fact, there was substantial emotional burdens left unaddressed, as unfinished business.

The unfolding of the plot allows them to unburden themselves and finish their business with family members, some very far away. If this sounds a lot like a therapy session, it is actually, as the woman seduced in the piece is a grief counselor attending a funeral, of a person she never knew, and becomes involved in a tryst with the bereaved widower.

The writing of Carey Crim is a perfect match for the southwest Florida audience at the Asolo. Judging by the response of the attendees on opening night, some of the lines received big belly laughs. If the crowd is laughing, and laughing deeply, they are paying careful attention. I am not certain millennials would get the sense of urgency, the play portrays. But then again, millennials are not the target audience.

The direction by Peter Amster, moved the story along steadily, the essential timing for punch lines were on the mark, including the misunderstanding of "paying for sex?"

In a sense, all therapy is drama, and all drama is therapeutic. The ancient Greeks understood this. Tragedy and comedy on stage provided relief, diversion and catharsis. Drama is targeted to an audience, therapy to an audience of one. It is the process of narration by the patient to a willing and eager recipient. Written into the plot-line however, the playwright included the Gestalt technique of speaking to an "empty chair."

You might recognize this from Clint Eastwood’s monologue to the empty chair at the 2012 Republican National Convention. Some listeners thought his talk was the ramblings of a demented senior citizen who was losing his mind on national television. Far from it. Eastwood was, as you recall, the Mayor of the City of Carmel, CA., which is stones throw from the Esalen Institute.

The "empty chair“ technique was taught at that institute for decades, by Fritz Perls and his followers. Simply put, people can unburden their minds and souls if they speak to the person who is now gone, by addressing the chair, in the present. Angus and Ollie get do so in the plot convincingly. For Eastwood, it was President Obama, for Ollie it is his aging father; for Angus it is a deceased wife. Speaking plainly, clearly, directly, even in the golden years, when much of life is already spent, and perhaps for the first time, the vice grip of emotional torment can be unlocked.

Catherine Smitko (Abigail) plays the grief counselor skillfully. As a Professor of Psychology, I can tell you, she would pass my class. We are all familiar with the vocabulary, these days when someone mouths them, it feels like a joke. Jack Wetherall, plays the recent widower. He plays the full range of emotions, and as a tease, he appears onstage for the first time naked. He gets his opportunity for catharsis focused on the fractures in his marriage.

David Alan Anderson (Ollie), the retired Detoit Tigers baseball player, has yet to speak honestly to his father and to share his struggles with him. For Ollie his talk with the empty chair was better received than the real deal.This piece, targeted to people of a certain age, has comedy, romance and tragedy. Above all, it is timely. There is love, loss and healing.

Performances continue through March 4 at the Mertz Theater. Tickets can be obtained from the Asolo Theater Box Office by calling 941 351 8000 or at their website www.asolorep.org.