BWW Reviews: COMIC POTENTIAL at 2nd Story Theatre in Warren

Comic Potential is Alan Ayckbourn's take on television of the future where actors are not actors at all, but machines. Given the success of James Cameron's Avatar, Ayckbourn might be on to something.

The heroine of the story is Jacie (Laura Sorensen), a perpetually 24-year old "act-oid" who is currently working on the set of a low-budget daytime hospital-based soap opera. The soap is "directed" by Chandler Tate (John Michael Richardson), a has-been director who is so old-fashioned that he remembers what it was like to work with human actors. The actoids on the soap opera set speak only the lines that are fed to them electronically by Trudi (Susie Bowen Powers) and Prim (Juli Parker), their technicians.

The show one of a stable of low-quality, money-making daytime television shows that are looked after by television executive Carla Pepperbloom (Lynne Collinson). Carla, at every turn reminds us that actoids, like all machines, are supposed to do what we want them to do, when we want them to do it. They are not to have independent thought or actions. They are certainly not supposed to understand something as complex as "comedy".

That thinking is put to a test by Adam (Dillon Medina), an aspiring director, who by luck of his birth is also the nephew of the Chairman of the Board, Lester (Bob Colonna) who owns the corporate conglomerate which owns the network which owns the soap opera. While teaching Jacie some basic Buster Keaton double-takes, Adam discovers that Jacie has assimilated all of the dialogue of all of the roles she has played and her circuitry has created something quite similar to a personality. The teacher and the student, predictably, fall in love.

Adam and Jacie, with the help of Chance, Trudie and Prim, try to convince Carla that Jacie's personality is more than just faulty circuitry and that Jacie can handle more complex roles, with complex emotions...that she is, almost, human. Carla's world view does not include machines that think for themselves and she wants Jacie's program melted down.

The lovers flee. The lovers are found. Jacie's extraordinary talent is recognized by Lester and she is given the high-powered programming job previously held by Carla. As Jacie becomes more human, flush with power, she begins to lose her humanity.

Laura Sorensen, as Jacie, has most complex role, which she handles effortlessly. Under Shea's direction and in Sorensen's capable hands, Jacie's transformation seems entirely plausible. Dillon Medina gives a fine performance as Adam, the young, naïve, aspiring director. The pair has no problem executing the vaudevillian, physical, comedy.

Their characters bitter rivals; John Michael Richardson and Lynne Collinson are marvelously entertaining in their respective roles. Richardson gets to be as boozy and blousy as Collinson is stone-faced and un-movable. Their characters say the most vile, outrageous, things to each other, and the actors seem to be having a great time.

Susie Bowen Powers and Juli Parker are perfectly understated as the bureaucratic technicians who welcome the interruption to their daily life.

Bob Colonna needn't stretch much for his role as Lester, but does a fine job.  Vince Petronio and Paula Faber are chameleons, each taking many different small characters in the play. Kevin Broccoli rounds out the cast of fine performances.

Ed Shea has directed a tight production of Alan Ayckbourn's satiric social commentary.  Comic Potential is given the structure of an updated, sardonic, Pygmalion for the millennium generation.

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Comic Potential runs at 2^nd Story Theatre through February 21, 2010.  Tickets are $25 and can be purchased at the Box office, which is located at 28 Market St., Warren, RI or by phone at 401-247-4200.

Photo credit: 2ndStory/Richard W. Dionne, Jr.