Review: APROPOS OF NOTHING at Keegan Theatre

Inappropriate crushes are best left to oneself, especially when it involves a married person — a lesson never learned by Owen (Ryan Sellers), the lead character in Greg Kalleres’ comedy “Apropos of Nothing” making its DC premiere at the Keegan Theatre.

When he blurts to a fellow wedding guest that he loves Lily (Irene Hamilton), the wife of his Best Friend Martin (Justin Von Stein), the news travels too fast. His girlfriend Rebecca (Emily Erickson) kicks him out of the house, forcing him to live for a time where else? At the home of his best friends, where temptations are compounded.

Not that there’s a lot of a lot of spark of a relationship there. Mostly there’s talk. And not the kind of serious talk the situation may require, but the kind of one-line setups common to sitcoms. 

It’s not your imagination. Director Ray Ficca leans into the live sitcom idea not only with those musical “stings” that separate quick blackout scenes, but with the recorded sounds you’d hear on a sound stage of a director shouting “quiet on the set” and moving equipment around between scenes. They might as well throw in ads for moderate to severe Crohn’s disease to replicate the full broadcast experience.

What’s missing in this approximation of a sitcom, though, are the laughs. Scenes supposed to end with a laugh line are usually met with silence as action moves on in scenic designer Josh Sticklin’s fussy, multi-level set. Ninety minutes of this with no intermission can be oppressive. 

Had there been any spark of chemistry between any of the cast, this might have been forgiven, as if to up the rom to make for the lack of com. But the characters all come off as loose pals who have no need of deeper connection. 

The fault is in the writing, where even the opening scene, between Rebecca and a wildly inappropriate teen (Drew Sharpe), doesn’t immediately convey what their relationship might be - brother and sister? Stepmom and son? Oh, eventually we learn: professor and student.

And if Rebecca isn’t justified enough in kicking him out of her office for making a pass, she would be for his defense of cliches, which pile up so quickly in examples they kind of infest the rest of the script as well. 

Of the cast, Hamilton’s Lily can build herself into an amusing frenzy (usually ending with a scream in a pillow) but doesn’t seem to connect with the men around her. Von Stein’s Martin is the most natural of them, but he’s written as someone just a little too dumb to believe. Not only does he let a guy after his wife live with them, he holds a long conversation with the equally clueless student in a bar and it’s never clear if their blather is because they’re drunk or merely dim. 

“Apropos of Nothing,” it turns out, is a fitting description of the whole exercise, which,  even for summertime fare, is hardly there. 

Running time: One hour, 30 minutes, no intermission.

Photo credit: Ryan Sellers and Irene Hamilton in “Apropos of Nothing” at the Keegan Theatre. Photo by Cameron Whitman.