Not a musical: "Love Song" is a quirky comedy
Go! review
Joseph Parks as Beane in the Playhouse in the Park's production of "Love Song." Photo by Sandy Underwood.
Last summer, we saw Joseph at the Second Stage Theatre in New York where he starred in "Eurydice," a play that the Know Theatre is prooducing next spring. Small world.....
First off, “Love Song” is not a musical, although it does sing, in a way.
Rather, it’s a quirky little comedy about a hermit-like 20- or 30-something tollbooth worker with a minimalist lifestyle discovering love for the first time.
The action alternates between Beane’s apartment that of his sister Joan, a career-obsessed perfectionist, and her husband Harry.
The apartments are both sparsely equipped, but while Joan and Harry’s place appears to be zen-chic in its clean lines and white chairs, Beane’s loft is just empty. Lacking both a plate and a full set of silverware, he eats from an enameled metal cup with a spoon. In fact, when a attractive young female burglar named Molly breaks into to steal everything he owns, she can pretty much put it all in her pocket.
But when he walks in on her during the apparent crime, she also steals his heart.
Prior to Molly, Beane was the guy who compulsively, obsessively kept to himself. Joan tells the story of how a school bus bully poked her brother in the back of the neck with a pencil for an entire school year without Beane ever turning around or doing anything to acknowledge the poking.
But once he meets Molly, Beane becomes verbose, even poetic, waxing eloquently, almost maniacally, about all manner of things, whereas previously he couldn’t answer a simple question in a personality quiz that Harry attempts to administer. He begins to live fully for the first time, relishing even simple things like turkey club sandwiches.
Beane’s new-found enthusiasm for life results in his quitting the tollbooth job and seeking to expand his outlook. His good cheer even has an effect on Joan and Harry, who re-discover the spark of their own relationship.
But still, something doesn’t seem quite right to them about Beane and Molly, so Joan sets out to unravel the mystery of the girl burglar she’s yet to meet, even though it could mean an end to Beane’s joy.
John Kolvenbach’s script if both fast-moving (90 minutes, no intermission) and poetic, the kind of magic realism that speaks to love and longing in an intelligent and profound way while providing frequent laughs. The acting is likewise taut and to-the-point under the direction of Michael Evan Haney, who allows the characters their effusiveness without being cloying or unnecessarily silly.
