The Smell of the Kill

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

Three couples get together for dinner once a month for only one reason: the men were college buddies, and it’s a way to hang onto their almost-grown-up-but-not-quite-ready-to-give up-their-irresponsible -adolescent-lifestyle-just-quite-yet. This particular night they meet at Nicky and Jay’s. The guys are in the dining room putting golf balls, while the three wives are in the kitchen drinking wine, sort of cleaning, and climbing over and around and about each other jumping with wild abandon on a variety if different subjects. As they delve into handling relationships, they tentatively and mockingly spirit each other to tell the truth when none of them are eager to be the first to spell any beans.

Laura Norman, Meagan Van De Hey, Emily Paton Davies star in The Smell of the Kill. Photo by Eric Weber

Alf Kremer, Rick Amick and Don Johnson voice the three guys who never appear on stage.

They want desert, and they want it now. Not getting the response they want, they pitch several golf balls into the kitchen to underscore their sweet tooth craving and macho demand.

Megan Van De Hey gives Nicky sharp curves, sharp stances, and sharp words. Nicky knows how to take control, and Van De Hey knows how to maneuver Nicky down the terse sharp path of control. In a fury she whips cream as though it had just snuck in after curfew needing a whipping. And when it has been whipped to its heightened glory, she pours it over the golf balls she has thrown into a bowl. When asks what it is, she bites the word “dessert,” and when she sprays the concoction, she announces “there may be a bug in it.”

Written by Michele Lowe, produced by Robert Wells and Dave Johnson, this enormously well done highlighted very, very honest funny play is directed by Terry Dodd.

Who could guess that a piece about three wives who work their way up to contemplating getting rid of their husbands, who find a meal locker in the basement outsmarts the husbands, answering all of their problems, could be an hysterical laugh a minute from beginning to end? Because of its astute direction, because it is beautifully written, and because it is perfectly cast with three distinct artists who define their characters with a carving knife, delicate excuses, and conniving minds is a giggle, a laugh, and 90 minutes of unadulterated sheer, total unadulterated fun.

Running without intermission at The Avenue Theatre, it is little wonder the success of this production demanded an extension to its original run.

Smug, critical, a real estate agent along with her husband, who won’t let her work now that they have kids, Debra chides Nicky every chance she gets for working. Mothers should be stay-at-homers. She is, so should every one else. Emily Patton Davies delivers the stinging smugness with deliberate flings of her long brown hair for Debra. Debra molded into the perfect wife and mother, while husband, Marty, believes in having his cake and eating it too with whatever convenient cupcake that appears. Somewhere within Debra’s smug perfection, Davies successfully brings to light a hidden agenda. For an actor to allow the audience to see through a character demands sly trickery, and Davies knows how to project this with wry intimidation standing in juxtaposition to Nicky’s boisterous voice and movements, and Molly’s hesitant reticent hiding-a-delicious-secret glint in her eyes.

Quiet, delicate, Laura Norton paces her unraveling of inner turmoil with deliberate measurements for Molly. Every few minutes, her husband Danny calls to her telling her he misses her, telling her he loves her. Although she responds to him, it is clear this is not a relationship formulated in Heaven. No secret, but Norton hides Molly’s un-secret under a clear plastic bushel. Molly desperately wants a baby, visiting Nicky’s often. When the baby cries, it is Molly who rushes off to look after him. Yes, Danny loves her. Yes, he adores her, but sexual intimacy locks itself in a closet with no baby making mannerisms. There is reason to suspect his closet hides a great un-secret.

Jay is on his way to jail for embezzlement, and although Nicky isn’t too eager to talk about it, the newspaper article is found tacked to the inside of a cupboard. A vegetarian, Jay discovers hunting, buys a thousand dollar meat locker and fills it with deer meat and furry heads of critters. The animals are as trapped in the meat locker as the three women are trapped in their marriages.

When the baby throws up on Molly, the other two discover she wears a red and black teddy. It didn’t come from Danny who sends her flowers and recently bought her seven tee shirts from The Gap. The teddy came from a friend, Jacob, one of many such affairs she finally admits to. The downplaying of Molly on the part of Norman works extremely well. The more she reveals, the funnier it gets.

Although Jay is driving Nicky to distraction she finally admits she can’t leave him because everything is in his name.

To ensure Debra will take off her shirt, Nicky deliberately throws up on her, revealing a French pink bra. Molly’s been warned about not drinking too much, and she continues to drink, just a little more with a finality of care free abandonment. Nicky takes great pleasure using the contentions of the moment to focus her frustrations on the fallacies of Molly and Debra.

The three snipe and chide each other. They are more un-friends than friends thrown only together because of their husbands over a 15-year period. Tonight seems to be the night when everything is wrung out and hung up to dry right under the kitchen skylight Nicky calls “God’s Little Window.”

Caught in their web of roles, the more treacherous their lives reveal, the more the chiding and sniping cracks their masks, the funnier the scenario, the richer the laughter. The expertise of the three actors brings The Smell of the Kill vibrantly to life leaving a wanting to see this production more than once. It’s that good.