Terran Scully
ALE Editor
Patrick Akers
Staff Reporter
Three actors stand on an excessively pink stage. One is dressed in neon-purple spandex, pretending to be an ice cream cone. The other two break-out into brash, cartoonish yelling. Welcome to “Looking for Olivia.”
Written by former student, Steve Coker and directed by Dan Anderson, “Looking for Olivia” premiered at Clark Thursday. The first production of the ’09-10 season, at two and a half hours long it suffered from poor writing and exaggerated acting.
The plot is something we can almost all relate to – impressing our parents. When Olivia is locked out of her apartment she is taken in by Henry. Henry soon finds himself pretending to be her husband so Olivia can prove to her rich parents that she is self-reliant.
Like a snowball rolling downhill, the play starts out slow but eventually picks up the pace. The first half-hour is painfully sluggish. Once the title-character, Olivia, enters the story things get kicked up notch.
You get drawn into her character and want to further understand her situation.
The pace really picks up, however, in the second half when the parents arrive earlier than expected. They pulled the play out of a tornado of eccentricity and gave it a much more realistic vibe.
John Gentle and Marcella Laasch did a splendid job, playing believable, well-rounded characters. The two had great chemistry and played off each other nicely.
Almost all the characters were built off clichés.
Henry (JJ Harris) is our straight-man protagonist. Henry was a one-tone character. This was due to his acting abilities and the way the character was written. In a lot of scenes I felt like I was watching an actor rather than a character.
His girlfriend Tia (Kaylen Rich) is the naggy girlfriend. Rich did a good job of being annoying, almost too good of a job.
His friend David (Brandon Daniel) is the lovable loser. He played his character a little over-the-top but was entertaining, nonetheless.
Amanda Martin-Tully, who in the interest of full disclosure is a former staff member of The Independent, did a good job of playing the off-kilter girl-next-door, Olivia.
Producer and director, Anderson, decided to set it in the year of 1987. From the clothes, to the jokes, to even the music during intermission – it’s like watching a live episode of “Saved by the Bell.” Just take ten of your favorite comedies from the 80s, throw them in a blender, add a pinch of mediocrity, and you get “Looking for Olivia.”
Towards the end, “Looking for Olivia” was just looking for a way to close the curtains. As the plot resolved, it danced around the idea of closing for the last half-hour. Coming to an abrupt stop, it randomly pulls the plug and is over.
Running two and a half hours, including a fifteen minute intermission, it is really long for a romantic comedy. The first half-hour could have been easily reduced to five minutes.
The problem here is the writing. With recurring jokes and dialogue, it all seemed very repetitive. The actors can only do so much with what they’re given.
In the end “Looking for Olivia” simply feels outdated – been there, done that. I now realize that I never wanted to find Olivia.
“Looking for Olivia” is playing from Nov. 13-14, 20-21, at the Decker Theatre in the Frost Arts Center.
