BWW Reviews: Theater Schmeater's THE MOST DESERVING Isn't

How do you decide what is deserving to be considered as art both monetarily and sociologically? Yes, it's all very subjective and depending on the person but for me, especially with theater, it needs to convey some sort of message or at least an engaging story. Unfortunately the current production of "The Most Deserving" at Theater Schmeater missed the mark in those regards as it failed to engage me on a number of levels and came across more as watching a bland Lifetime Original movie mixed with the Government Access Channel.

Catherine Trieschmann delves in the lives of a small Kansas town whose arts council has been awarded a $20,000 grant to be given to a local artist with an under recognized voice. And so the debates begin as the members of the council deliberate on who is the most deserving. There's council president Jolene (Deniece Bleha) who may be willing to compromise her vote to placate an influential government official, her husband Ted (Matthew Middleton) who's only on the council to be nearer to one of the newer members, the aspiring artist Dwayne (Ron Richardson) who wants the grant for himself, Edie (Karen Jo Fairbrook) who's late husband was the benefactor of much of the grant, and Liz (Mona Leach) the young art teacher who wants the grant to go to Everett (Ronnie Hill) an unstable local black paraplegic who creates art out of garbage and on whom Liz wants to base a book.

The biggest problem I had with engaging with this script was that not one of the characters in it was at all sympathetic. So who was I supposed to root for? Or was I just supposed to revel in laughing (yes it was supposed to be a comedy) at bad people doing bad things and failing? Well we have reality TV for that purpose and I personally can't stand reality TV. Plus the dialog was so cliché and stale that I couldn't even get into that. And if all that weren't enough to keep me from investing in these characters, for some reason director John Longenbaugh staged many of the scenes with his actors facing upstage and many times completely blocking the sightlines of other characters. In fact the first 15 minutes of the play I spent looking at the back of Bleha's head which completely obscured the seated Richardson. Sorry, but I can't invest or engage with a hairstyle.

The cast does what they can with the script but there's so little complexity or dimension to any of the characters that I can't see they had much to work with. Hill has a few livelier moments as his instability catches up with him but even those seemed to come out of nowhere. Fairbrook has a few amusing scenes as she gets more and more drunk but it all seemed forced and cliché. And Jolene as the driving force and the only character you could call an antagonist in the piece (I guess) came across as insipid from the one-note Bleha.

There's really not much to recommend from this show as it felt like a hackneyed script from someone who finds council meetings fascinating. And so with my three letter rating system I give this show a confused and bored NAH. But then, as we know, art is subjective. So someone else may find this tale riveting. Just not this someone.

"The Most Deserving" performs at Theater Schmeater through April 18th. For tickets or information visit Theater Schmeater online at www.schmeater.org.

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