The Island Hopper: Social Security

It's that image I always carry in with me when I go to see amateur productions -- a certain cringe factor in which I anticipate a couple of hours of my life spent suffering both on behalf and because of the actors, and contemplating the possibility of opening a vein with the playbill.

So I was pleasantly surprised by the Marco Players' first production of this year's season; "Social Security" is an enjoyable staging of Andrew Bergman's adult-themed comedy.

The plot, in brief: A controlling mother goes to live with her highbrow New York daughter and her art dealer husband after another daughter -- bitter over her own marital and family strife -- foists her off. Hilarity ensues.

I've seen another production of the play and had been underwhelmed: That show was directed with a heavy-handed ba-dum-bum element that buried the wit in Bergman's ample one-liners.

The Marco Players' production doesn't make that mistake, allowing the actors to throw Bergman's lines off as intended -- with a dry offhandedness that makes them all the funnier.

But by the same token, the play would have benefited from a surer hand at the helm.

The actors are talented enough, and the script funny enough, to have created a top-notch community theater show, and yet it falls short of the mark, managing to be entertaining but somehow leaving you wanting more.

A few examples: For starters, often the show's blocking -- that's how the actors on stage move around each other and the furniture, for those of you who aren't theater geeks -- tends to be wooden and contrived in places, with the actors striking dramatic presentational poses here and there, rather than moving like actual human beings in their actual living room.

And several of the actors make character choices that could've been honed in rehearsals: Judy Daye, for example, who plays the troublemaking mother, Sophie Greengrass, is supposed to be a quintessential Jewish mother -- yet Daye's accent is rather alarmingly Yiddish, the character seeming to be fresh off the boat from the Fatherland.

Emma Worsdale, who otherwise competently plays Sophie's long-suffering daughter and caretaker, has a single facial expression, a perpetual look of sucking a lemon or catching a whiff of an unpleasant odor.

And the pacing of the show lags in too many spots. A quick-witted, fast-paced show like "Social Security" cries out for celerity, yet Joyce lets cues lag and moments drag on.

These are the kinds of details that should be polished in the rehearsal process.

But all the actors seem to have ability, and they manage to nail the general gist of their characters and the show. Worsdale's Trudy has a surprisingly touching moment when she reveals that her marriage is falling apart, for example.

Daye, despite that distracting accent, brings a charm to her Sophie that allows you to forgive her for deliberately pushing all her daughters' buttons.

There are capable performances by the men in the show as well: Fred Shinn as Trudy's cheating husband, Martin; Charles Daye as renowned artist and still-hot-to-trot nonagenarian Maurice Koenig; and handsome and debonair Allen DuQuet as David Kahn, Sophie's son-in-law. DuQuet, however, while evincing the right slick New York urbanity, is shaky on his lines throughout, robbing many of his excellent one-liners of their punch and leaving the other actors occasionally floundering, waiting for their cue.

Karen Anglin plays Barbara Kahn, David's wife and Sophie's sophisticated daughter, who goes from polished socialite to petulant child with the arrival of her mother. Anglin seems to settle into her role as the show goes on, becoming more three-dimensional, and oddly, far prettier as she washes off most of her heavy makeup and literally lets down her hair.

There were a few technical snafus the night I attended (the Friday after opening night): music cues that never came, leaving the actors dancing to a doorbell rather than a waltz in one scene; a teakettle that issued birdcalls instead of a whistle; and a fully lighted, interminably long scene change in Act II that desperately needs streamlining (despite being executed with aw-shucks lan by the nervous stagehand). But these were, no doubt, simply onetime mishaps, easily addressed in the future and well received by the good-natured crowd.

The bottom line, as I pontificated afterward to my companions, is context. The theater isn't Broadway or even off-Broadway ("It's off-North Collier," one friend quipped), and Marco isn't London's West End. But as far as local community theater goes, the Players have created an enjoyable piece of entertainment worth checking out.

My shallow, completely subjective spotlight of a local personality this week goes to Karen Anglin, who stars in the show. Anglin, whose pretty pixie face is reminiscent of "Little House on the Prairie"'s Melissa Gilbert, is appearing on the Players stage for the fifth time. She started acting in 1996 at the behest of her mother. Now her hubby, Jon, a jeweler in Bonita, pitches in with meals and laundry so Anglin can pursue her avocation, which she hopes to expand to film work. If you miss Karen in "Social Security," drop into Marco's Island Garden Center and have her give you gardening tips!

And as long as you're dropping things, why not drop me a line and share your ideas, suggestions, requests, and feedback with me at missyates@juno.com ?