- OTHER MEDIA
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- Hardly Breathing by Deborah Wade
- SF Bay Guardian March 14, 2007 (Robert Avila)
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- RIPE Theatre presents company member Deborah Wade's noir-tinged romantic
comedy about an intense if inept private investigator named Star Malone
(Wade) and her strapping but meek-mannered, vertigo-prone client Billy
(Christopher DeJong), whose rich father has gone missing. Billy's fiancée,
Jane (Trish Tillman), meanwhile, is an intense if inept poetess equally
frustrated by the lack of ardor in her relationship and the lack of recognizable
talent in her rhymes (which are definitely atrocious, but without the merit
of being very humorously so — a problem that describes the play as
a whole). During a disappointing poetry convention in Des Moines, Iowa,
Jane falls for a hotel room-service attendant (Mark Rachel) who turns out
to have a past in common with the same abysmal private eye trying at that
moment to shtup her fiancé back home. Peter Q. Parish's set design
visually girds this nicely madcap yet well-worn setup like the paper umbrella
and plastic rim monkey primping a cocktail. Generally speaking, however,
without the charming and comically astute cast (directed by RIPE coartistic
director Noah Kelly) to lend the play a semblance of life, Hardly Breathing
would be DOA. (Avila)
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