Topher Payne won the Osborn Award for a promising new playwright a few years back and has since become one of the most popular and prolific Atlanta-based writers. His affectionate romantic comedy Tokens of Affection [2011] has just finished its sold out all-too-short-one-weekend run at The Red Door Theatre in Union Springs.
Directed by Kathryn Adams Wood, a uniformly strong ensemble of six actors get more comfortable with Payne's snappy dialogue and contagiously rib-tickling situations as the performance progresses.
Most of the action takes place in and around the bohemian [i.e. "messy"] Manhattan apartment of Charlie Garrett [Alex Eberhart] who is struggling under a deadline to animate sea-turtles for a computer game he is constructing. His continually interrupted by phone calls from his sister Claire [Charity Smith], complaining that their neat-freak mother Jackie [Ms. Wood] has come to stay with her, having walked out on their father Frank [David Allen] and wants a divorce because he doesn't bring her flowers. -- "Mr. Fix-it" Frank meanwhile has arrived at Charlie's, suitcase in hand, with a far-fetched reason for his visit.
The adult children feel ambushed, and not comprehending why Jackie would suddenly ask for a divorce after 37 years of marriage, they want nothing more than to have their parents reconcile, leaving them to resume their normal lives.
Charlie's needy but supportive neighbor Rita [Elizabeth Roughton], a former actress and possibly romantic interest for Charlie, becomes a not-too-welcome distraction to Frank, and Claire's husband Bruce Burnham [Timothy Hereford] always identifies himself on the phone to Charlie by stating his full name (a running joke that audiences anticipate with glee) wants his mother-in-law out of his house because she has taken it over completely.
Playwright Payne deliberately keeps Jackie off-stage for a long time, while her assorted attributes are delineated by other characters in great detail; when she does finally appear, Ms. Wood displays all the passive-aggressive behaviors and martyred posturing that audiences expect.
For all of the melodramatic exaggerations he invents, the author has crafted characters and situations everyone can recognize, and the Red Door company take on his heightened insightfully witty dialogue with a remarkable vigor. -- As each character recognizes the building absurdity of their situations and admits a need for attention and a wish for happiness, they also discover that love is expressed in a variety of ways, and that they are best expressed in the "little things" that matter a lot more than major events.
