By Nate Brown
The Leona Wagner Black Box in the Rose Wagner Performance Arts Center in Salt Lake City, Utah is a great venue for Pygmalion Theatre Company to bring us Julie Jensen’s critically acclaimed comedy, Wait! As the audience walks in, a single, bare light shines on a stage filled with, well, junk. It isn’t clear immediately that the set design by Thomas George and lighting design by Rachel Harned is serving any purpose, but the more you stare at the odds and ends placed seemingly haphazardly around the space, the more you get a feeling of purpose. As the soundscape designed by Mikal Troy Klee seeps into your consciousness, the play has already started to touch you.
Wait! tells the story of Wendy Burger (Sydney Shoell) as she rejoins her dad (Mark Brocksmith) and restarts her life as a UPS driver. We follow her through love and melancholy as she helps her friend Lou (also Brocksmith), a guy she used to date because “no one else would have them,” rebuild a decrepit theater. As she discovers an acting voice of her own, and the “very deep” Oh Vixen My Vixen (Daisy Blake Perry), the volatility of her life blooms in its cuttingly beautiful and unflinchingly harsh reality.
Shoell is so authentic as Wendy Burger that you might be tempted to think that she was typecast and is really just a bad actress, but don’t be fooled. The highs are high and the lows are comfortably real, and at times the glisten in her eyes brings tears to your own. Shoell takes a character who is difficult for most to identify with and makes her someone we love.
Perry’s performance drips with clueless delusions of grandeur. She highlights Vixen both as the muse and the sometimes-antagonist, and revels in the humor that forces the acting community to laugh at itself.
Brocksmith in his multiple roles as Dad, Lou, and Hazar joins Tamara Howell in her parts as Modesto, Jenya, and Floating Piñata Head as the true backbone of this play. The script instructs these actors to wear the same costumes (subtly designed by Maddiey Howell) throughout the show, which I feared would make things confusing, but never once did I have any question which character was onstage. Brocksmith contrasts idleness, enthusiasm, and curmudgeonry well enough that the characters don’t even look alike. Likewise, Howell is brash, pompous, and strong as she inhabits each person she presents. When they share the stage as Hazar and Jenya, they shine and reflect each other with impeccable timing and the comfortable bickering of an old couple who haven’t quite forgotten they love each other.
Fran Pruyn’s direction and stage management by Jennie Pett bring clarity and a good pace to the show, with only a single exception that I would have preferred to be different – when exploding beer cans cause actors to giggle as they are sprayed and forces the audience to overlook a beer puddle on the stage. Pruyn keeps the characters moving and articulating such that the eyes are never bored and the ears never strain to understand what’s being said. Pett receives the greatest compliment that any stage manager can hope for – the scenes moved and changed so fluidly that I wasn’t even sure she was there.
Pygmalion Theatre Company’s Wait! at the Leona Wagner Black Box in Salt Lake will not be for everyone. There is mild language and open consumption of alcohol onstage, including portrayals of drunkenness. The themes of the show are likely appropriate for older children, but are written for an adult audience and may not keep the attention of younger audiences. However, for mature young adults and adults, Pygmalion’s Wait! will entertain, inspire, and enlighten.
Pygmalion Theatre Company presents Wait! by Julie Jensen
Leona Wagner Black Box, Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 W Broadway, Salt Lake City, UT 84101
February 21 – March 9, 2019, 7:30 PM Thu-Sat, 2:00 PM Sun
Tickets: $20
Pygmalion Theatre Company Facebook page
Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center Facebook page
Wait! Facebook event
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