"Stage Kiss"

    Extended through April 6th
Actors lead different lives from the rest of us. Their nine-to-five is generally more like 7:30 to midnight.
For them, a kiss is work, and for actors just part of their day at the office.

"Stage Kiss," at Playwrights Horizons Mainstage Theater through March 23rd, is immensely clever. The play that wraps around the play within the play in Sarah Ruhl's brilliant new comedy mirrors the events in the play being staged in the first act.

The cast of the play within the play with Jessica Hecht center take a bow.
Photo © Joan Marcus

She (Jessica Hecht), an actress in her 40s, auditioning for the role of Ada Wilcox, is surprised that the actor He (Dominic Fumusa), playing opposite her is her first love, just as Johnny Lowell is Ada's in the melodrama they are rehearsing.

She (Jessica Hecht) and He (Dominic Fumusa) share a "Stage Kiss."
Photo © Joan Marcus

"Stage Kiss" is about and of the theater. The perils of acting, like its joys, are in getting to embody anyone but yourself and getting to try out being someone else. A "Stage Kiss" can be bestowed even on the unlikeliest of partners, as when She rehearses with Kevin (Michael Cyril Creighton), the understudy whose approach to the project is far more tentative and less empassioned than the one He plants.

     

She (Jessica Hecht) and
Kevin (Michael Cyril Creighton)
audtion a "Stage Kiss."
Photo © Joan Marcus

 "Stage Kiss" is in part about creating character, and understanding love. Real life jeopardises theatrical life and messes with stage craft. Like Ada, She has an understanding Husband (Daniel Jenkins), and a life that takes on an over-the-top turn.

• Will She and He rekindle their love?
• Would she rather live in squalor with her first love than go back to her well-to-do husband?
• What can her husband do to tip the balance in his favor?
• Is that first love all we've cracked him/her to be?

Jessica Hecht lends a sophistication and an innocence to her character in "Stage Kiss." Hecht has a distinctive voice that seems to both quesiton and admonish at the same time. In "Stage Kiss," she gets to mimic, impersonate and do accents. At every nudge from The Director (Patrick Kerr), she nails it immediately and creates another persona.

There are so many facets to this superbly intelligent play.

There are in-jokes for theater folk: the ineffectual laissez-faire Director; the actress who hasn't found work for years; the relentless optimism of reviving a less than mediocre play; the dangers of stage romance.

For the marrieds, there are questions about fidelity and temptation, and the risks in workplace romance.

Rebecca Taichman directs this excellent cast,  which also includes Emma Galvin as Angela, Millie and the Maid; Clea Alsip as Millicent and Laurie; and Todd Almond as The Accompanist. Todd Almond has also provided originally music for the production that fits the spirit of the enterprise very neatly.

Clea Alsip and Todd Almond in a scene from Sarah Ruhl's
"Stage Kiss." Photo © Joan Marcus

The sets which build from an empty rehearsal space to an elaborate 1930s drawing room and a truly delapidated and overcrowded East Village  mess of an apartment are the work of the talented Neil Patel. Costume designer Susan Hilferty is responsible for dressing the cast over various periods.

"Stage Kiss" is top-to-toe marvellous. Go and enjoy a wonderfully engaging theatrical experience.

For more information on "Stage Kiss," please visit Playwrights Horizons. For more review, visit VevlynsPen.com.

Jessica Hecht and Daniel Jenkins in a scene from the play within
"Stage Kiss." Photo © Joan Marcus

Michael Cyril Creighton, Daniel
Jenkins and Emma Galvin in a scene
from "Stage Kiss." Photo © Joan Marcus

Jessica Hecht as She and Patrick Kerr
as the Director in a scene from
"Stage Kiss." Photo © Joan Marcus