Let’s get this out of the way first thing: I can’t recall the last time I saw a toilet onstage. But there it is, upstage left, gleaming and tidy. Interestingly (said the former nurse, who’s heard them all), there aren’t many potty jokes in The Feast. St. Louis Actors’ Studio’s first production of the year was written by John Burroughs grad Cory Finley. It’s about Matt, a struggling artist in Brooklyn and his girlfriend Anna, a successful project manager.
Sound ho-hum? Ha-ha. The joke’s on you. As the play opens, Matt (Spencer Sickmann) answers his door wearing a short pink silk kimono. It’s a plumber he swears he didn’t ask the landlord for. Anna (Jennifer Theby-Quinn) did, though; that toilet is making some very strange noises, according to the work order, including sounding like someone is down in there groaning. Plumber can’t find anything; life moves on, but not in what might be called regular order. Oh, it’s chronological, alright, but that’s about the only thing that’s regular.
To those of a certain age, it’s easiest to compare Feast to something out of the old television show The Twilight Zone. That’s pretty high praise right there. I won’t go much further on the story line, but the fact that Finley manages to happily smack the audience around and get to an ending in 70 minutes is pretty impressive in and of itself, beyond the mesmerizing story. Is Matt psychotic? Is Anna telling him the truth? And are the other people – the plumber, a therapist, a colleague of Anna’s, all played by Ryan Scott Foizey – real? Or maybe they’re real but deceptive.
Sickmann is an utter delight, particularly in a scene with Foizey, no slouch himself, as Foizey plays Anna’s colleague who’s also her (former? current?) boyfriend. Watch the faces, watch the body language for both of them. Lovely detail there, and one of the big reasons that small theaters can be such great venues. Theby-Quinn holds her own in the rapidly-growing-rocky relationship with Matt, but she’s generally the calmest person in the storm.
Patrick Huber’s set and lights play a key role here, and director John Pierson also did the sound – was that Paul Desmond I heard? Pierson orchestrated the tempo of this very well, no lull in things at all except during the brief scene changes, and frankly, both the brains and the heart rates of the audience really do need those.
Fun, fast, and not for people offended by strong, shouted language.
The Feast
through October 8, 2017
St. Louis Actors’ Studio
Gaslight Theater
360 N. Boyle
314-458-2978