Stage Kiss review – behind the scenes romcom is cute but slippery | Theater

Met doesn’t take long for the directors Sarah Ruhla 2011 romantic drama – two actors who were cast in a 1930 melodrama called The Last Kiss – to realize that they had signed up for an acting role in the production. The director is pessimistic, they all wave their hands and dodge “just trust your instincts”; small ones made of wood, like wooden treads; and the bombastic tone sounds silly to the naturally trained ears of the pair.

There is also a lot of imitation of life happening: the two, who are not known as He and He, show and become lovers, they also share a disturbing chemistry despite the fact that he and his character are married to the eldest daughter.

As a witty send-up of ballroom antics and 1930s musicals, Blanche McIntyre’s production works perfectly. There’s a steady and sensible sense of humor in this genre (one devastating revelation in The Last Kiss provides a way to tap into it), plus some delightful physical comedy, especially from James Phoon as the green but eager-to-learn, Kevin.

But Stage Kiss also takes a look at the play between art and life – especially if stage romance can bring about real feelings – and here it arrives unsteadily, thanks to a familiar but unsteady technique. The lights in the house are in all the opening positions, where they count (marked as everything after all it’s a play within a play?), while the moments that are supposed to be in the real world of Him and Her fall into sound dialogue or music. But there is no final explanation, no pulling back the invisible curtain that reveals everything in its place.

This perhaps deliberate ambiguity torpedoes the play’s main question, creating a very slippery slope for the capable directors (Patrick Kennedy as the child He, and MyAnna Buring as the neurotic but beautiful He) to create a convincing collaboration. And her fundamental choice, between the joy of being revived and the constant comfort of her marriage, lacks the emotional power it would have in a settled world.

Robert Innes Hopkins’ set does well with all the flexibility, jumping between the theater, the stage and He is smooth and, thanks to the surrounding pieces, placing us on either side of the proscenium arch. We’re in the band The Last Kiss, and suddenly we’re targeting the same audience.

If we are allowed to stay in one place for a long time.