By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Sure “I Ought To Be in Pictures” has some laughs. It is a Neil Simon comedy, after all, and the Black Swamp Players have assembled a cast of actors who know how to deliver a zinger.
But the play tugs at the heart as much as it tickles the funny bone. The characters’ humor is their way of putting off unpacking their emotional baggage, and boy, is there plenty.
The Black Swamp Players’ production of “I Ought To Be in Pictures” , directed by Wayne G. Weber, is on stage at the troupe’s new home at 115 E. Oak St., Bowling Green, Friday (Sept. 17) Saturday, (Sept. 18), Sept. 24, and 25 at 8 p.m. and Sunday (Sept. 19) and Sept. 26 at 2 p.m. Doors open 30 minutes prior to curtain time.
Libby (Katya Dachik) arrives at the door of her estranged father, Herb Tucker (Heath Diehl) hauling a suitcase and knapsack and a thick Brooklyn accent. She’s greeted by Steffy (Tiffany Scarola), Herb’s occasional lover.
Herb abandoned his family 16 years before having decided as he was eating his barley and mushroom soup, which he allows was delicious, that he could no longer live with his wife. He left her all the money he had and high tailed it to California, where he is now a screen writer.
Libby has arrived to find him and find a place for herself as a Hollywood star.
Diehl does wonderfully juggling Herb’s mixed emotions – yeah, he’s glad to see his daughter, but not the guilt she digs up. He knows the obstacles she faces to reach her goal given her lack of experience, especially given his own career is on the skids. Any one of the folks on the Oak Street stage has more impressive resume than Libby, whose one credit is as an understudy for a minor character in a high school summer production.
In her mind, she’s a New York-trained actress, and she’s ready to pursue this regardless of what her father says. She puts more faith in the voice of her dead maternal grandmother.
But her desire to be an actress is really beside the point. Dachik’s Libby is strong-willed and not your ingenue type; she’s short of stature and not glamorous. Rather, she knows a lot about hammers, and redecorating, and car repair. She’s can match Herb’s cutting wit jab for jab.
She has the moxie that he’s lost.
Scarola’s Steffy is the woman in the middle. She’s sticking by Herb and their weekly assignations, but is deeply unsatisfied. Scarola makes that ambivalence clear even as she moves around alone in Herb’s place as the lights go up. She wants him to leave this shabby bungalow – though less shabby after Libby has her way with it – and move into her much larger house. As a successful make-up artist she makes more than he does as a screenwriter. She feels it would provide a more supportive atmosphere to help him get back on track.
As it stands, when Herb gets a meeting to pitch a project, he has 46 pages – or rather one page copied 45 times. So instead of facing the disdain of youthful executives he heads to the race track.
And now Libby has stirred paternal feelings into the mix.
The comedy doesn’t end with a punchline. Everything is not packaged up and tied with bow. Instead the emotional baggage has been opened, and the work of unpacking has just begun.
