Live Theatre Workshop’s production of “Stage Kiss” deserves, well, a big kiss.
The Sarah Ruhl play is silly and funny and a jolly look at backstage theatrics. We dare you to leave the play without a grin on your face.
The actors in this smooth Sabian Trout-directed production deserve kisses of appreciation, as well.
Shanna Brock, who has keen comedy chops, plays a character given the moniker She. She is an actress who has been out of the theater loop for a decade when she decides to audition for a play about a woman who is dying and begs her tolerant husband to let her see her old love one more time. Cast opposite her is her long-ago lover, He. The play they are in requires kissing. Lots and lots of kissing. “When I kissed you just now, did it feel like an actor kissing an actor or a person kissing a person?” She asks He after an in-character make-out session.
Brock and Stephen Frankenfield are a total hoot as ex-lovers who still have lust — and some anger — in their hearts. Frankenfield made He dashing and self-absorbed. Brock’s She was insecure and self-absorbed. They were perfect together.
Also perfect was Keith Wick, the assistant to the director who takes on several roles in the play-within-the-play. Wick was deliciously over-the-top as a pimp and, especially, as the gay stand-in when He misses his rehearsal. He’s got to kiss She and, well, you’ll just have to see it. Wick always seems so quiet and unassuming until you catch him in a role like this, where his twisted and deranged characterizations bring audiences to their knees.
Playing the director is Matthew C. Copley, who has borrowed all the silly cliches about directors and made them his own.
Michael Woodson, Janet Roby and Jubilee Reynolds each portray a couple of characters, giving them distinction and, always, humor.
Ruhl has written plays that include “The Clean House” and “Eurydice.” “Stage Kiss” is a lot sillier than many of her works.
There are improbable twists and turns in the script. And it has a too-tidy ending. But we don’t care. We are laughing too hard throughout to notice any shortcomings.
