Beyond Therapy

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

When you call to make reservations, have two dates available. Seeing this hilarious brilliant very funny show once will not be enough. Christopher Durang’s blasting one-liners topple over each other so fast and furious several lines race by when you realize you’ve missed a very funny line and situation. The first time around you will manage to see half of the play. The second time around you will be able to concentrate on the second half, maybe.

Elgin Kelley, Josh Hartwell and Kevin Hart star in Beyond Therapy.

For me to rave about a comedy takes a brilliant script, and yes, there are several good ones, but this one now playing at the Avenue Theatre takes the cake. Besides a brilliant script, it also takes a highly proficient talented comedic artistic cast, and quick thinking applied direction.

Durang’s Beyond Therapy at the Avenue Theatre contains all the ingredients to send this comedy over the top and then some.Directed by Robert Wells, whose comedy happens to be his middle name, Beyond Therapy was the very first production to grace the stage at the old Avenue Theatre in 1987. Kevin Hart who turns the neurotic Bruce inside out wearing him sideways and sometimes upside down also played him lo those 19 years ago. Of course, he was only ten at the time, but Hart carries Bruce with impeccable timing way beyond therapy.

Lost in the maze of New York City in 1981, Bruce finds himself desperate for companionship, resorting to advertising his wanting to meet someone. Hooking up with Prudence, deliciously and hungrily played by Elgin Kelley, they meet at a quaint little restaurant priding itself on hiding its waiters. Deliberately Prudence announces to Bruce “I hope I am not to macho for you” as she struggles to place her purse in just exactly the right spot.

Conversation trips over itself with awkward uptightness. Her little girlness emerges meeting his child. He cries. She’s embarrassed. She wants people to be strong, and doesn’t like men who cry as she places her feet on the table. They end up throwing drinks at each other.

Bruce and Prudence need each other, even though it takes most of the play for them to realize it, which, after all is Durang’s point: relating in a high priced technological world of hurry and business gets tougher and tougher with plastic fences, gadgets, and busyness to hide behind. They make fun of the song “Someone To Watch Over Me” when that is exactly what they both ache for. Hiding behind their psychiatrists’ words, they also hide behind self-imposed barriers when meeting with their psychiatrists.

Ah yes, the psychiatrists. LuAnn Buckstein makes the concept of hyperactivity look like a slow boat to China as she tackles Dr. Charlotte Wallace attempting to soothe Bruce’s anxieties by fondling a stuffed Snoopy dog. Throwing her into frenzy, mixing up words then forgetting what she was talking about. Buckstein is a comedic marvel punctuating every word with a jab into the ribs.

James Nantz allows Dr. Stuart Farmington’s tongue to drip with lust as he treats Prudence by treating himself to her by consistently calling her Baby. He tells her she is a very sick woman and should not be with a therapist.

Then there’s confused Bob, who has every reason to be confused. Bob and Bruce have lived happily together, and now Bruce pursues Prudence. Josh Hartman wears Bob’s animated confusion hysterically snugly. When Bruce takes him to see Charlotte, leaving him abruptly with this Snoopy hugging verbal tongue-tied out of control so-called professional, Hartman’s mystified Bob takes center stage. No small trick to compete with Charlotte’s misplaced antics.

The soft colors of the set in blue and white with a wide window giving a shadowed New York City affect contrasts sharply to the vivid obnoxious colors the characters paint with gleeful abandonment. Michael R. Duran designed the modern set to fit into the restaurant scenes, the two psychiatrists’ offices and Bruce’s apartment. Pleasingly attractive to the eye, the table, chairs and cubes look like they belong in every situation. The calmness of the blue and white with the rambunctious roller coaster ambiance of the characters carries its own joke to proliferate onto the helter skelter scene.

Although he doesn’t appear until the end of the play, and is caught in the cross fire of Bruce and Prudence, Stuart and Charlotte, and yes, Bob, Broderick Ballantyne supplies Andrew, the elusive waiter, with the right punch to compete with the high rolling shenanigans.

Aside from the brilliance of the script, and its overwhelming entertainment, is the insight that the more off the wall Bruce and Prudence appear to be, the more normal they are as they unwrap themselves of layers of hidden treasures taking a stab at revealing themselves to each other. Their idiosyncrasies, no matter how amusing, take a back seat as they allow their true natures to emerge. Yes, they discover it is perfectly OK to claim “Someone To Watch Over Me” as a deeply meaningful song. It ties the bonds that have captured them from the inside out.

Although the world has careened rapidly into another dimension from the 1980s, when Durang wrote Beyond Therapy, it seems more appropriate now than ever before. This is one play that will season with age, with dignity and with sidesplitting laughability. It is always comforting to know there are people out there in the vast world who are nuttier than we are.

Even in this high-powered fantasy, kernels of truth roll on the floor laughing as hard as the audience.

No joke, this is one production you will want to see twice, your funny bone will demand it, your psyche will plead for it, and the missed lines from raucous noise coming from the audience will plague the mind with knee bending begging. Beyond Therapy is that good.