St. Louis has far more theatre than many people realize, and we – happily – have the audiences to support it, for the most part. (Financial support, I realize, is a whole different question.) Regular theatre-goers can get to the point of counting how many times they’ve seen a certain play, whether it’s their favorite or just something that pops up every year from a different company. Here’s a chance for something unseen.
Stray Dog Theatre brings us a brand new comedy thriller from local playwright Stephen Peirick. Monsters is the story of a St. Louis couple, Sarajane Alverson and Jeremy Goldmeier, playing Andi and Davis. She’s a cosmetologist and he just started to run his family diner after his father’s death. That’s not going so well; dear old Dad left a mountain of unpaid bills. But why are we in their unfinished basement? Therein lies the story.
Kevin O’Brien, as Jeremy, Davis’ kid brother, bursts in pushing a guy, played by Michael A. Wells, tied to an office chair, gagged and with a bloody knot on his head. Andi comes downstairs, totally unprepared for what she sees. Jeremy is equally shocked that she’s home, and uncharacteristically ill-kempt, not that Jeremy would know that word. O’Brien’s Jeremy is rather a doofus, wonderfully played with squirming body language and a wide knowledge of perfectly obvious movie references. Andi, nobody’s fool, can browbeat him into an explanation, or at least a subtotal one, of what she’s seeing, but it doesn’t come easily.
The characters are very realistic – Alverson’s Andi could have been any of several co-workers of mine years ago, for instance, and Goldmeier, as Davis, seems very comfortable as a struggling business owner and concerned husband. Eileen Engel is Piper, Andi’s sexy sister who arrives complaining about her probation officer. Just for practice, she works her wiles on Jeremy. The poor guy in the chair – what is his name, anyway? – doesn’t have much to say but contributes a lot in physical comedy.
Lots of laughs here, with some killer lines. (That, however, may be a bad choice of words on my part.) I’m not sure that these folks would actually speak in such grammatical sentences, but that’s a fairly minor quibble. Good work from actors and Peirick, and kudos to Gary F. Bell, director, and Stray Dog’s artistic director, for putting it all together.
Monsters
through June 24
Stray Dog Theatre
Tower Grove Abbey
2336 Tennessee
314-865-1005