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I had the best seat in the house for the world première (on March 5) of The Unicorn Theatre's production of Lia Romeo's comedy Green Whales: not by dint of a critic's power, but simply because the couple seated in front of me were engaged to be married, and throughout this well last-named playwright's romantic funny business, the man kept turning to his fiancée with knowing looks, as if to say, "We had that doubt too, remember?" By the end of the play, pretty much the entire audience bore the same look: in love, what is right and what is wrong is less a philosophical question than a question of is it right or wrong for ME?

Romeo, a graduate of Princeton and Rutgers, whose works have been recognized at the O'Neill National Playwrights' Conference and whose play Green Whales was work-shopped around the country, including at The Unicorn, shows a lively focus for bridging old style (if sometimes sitcom-y) comedy with newer, more volatile material. Green Whales takes its storyline from Turner Syndrome, an abnormality in the number of X chromosomes in one out of approximately every twenty-five hundred women, which can manifest itself in physical changes, such as flat chests, shortness and other exterior aspects. If the idea on paper recalls the Farrelly Bros. movie, Stuck on You, with Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear as conjoined twins or other hokey Hollywood attempts to play off on physical or psychological disadvantage, the playwright uses the Syndrome (one sister keeps telling the afflicted one, "It's not an illness!) as a metaphor to debate questions asked by philosophers and writers as varied as Molière and Goethe.

For Karen Wilson (Anna Safar), a thirty-eight year old online philosophy professor who looks like a chubby preteen, men are as abstract to her as her college courses on Nietzsche and Sartre. When she comes to New Jersey from Chicago to join her older sister, Joanna (Vanessa Severo), for their mother's funeral, their initial conversation, centered around how awful Mom was, seems to set the play in one direction. This getting-to-know-you beginning comes off forced-funny; Severo, to clue us in on her alcoholism, is directed to wobble around on heels and act like one of the guys from The Hangover. Yet, as the playwright gets her direction, the actors get their directives, and the play's real plot blossoms.

Through the haze of maudlin memories of their mother, Joanna begins to question Karen about love. Jo is living with her policeman boyfriend, Ray (Darren Kennedy), who dislikes Karen staying with them and views her as a freak because of her Turner Syndrome. After that difference is introduced, Joanna's crazy, looped idea to set up her sister in a chat room, specifically a site dedicated to men interested in young girls, sets up the playwright's theme of appearance versus reality. Using the pretext that Karen is thirteen, the sisters stumble into a possible match--a middle-aged advertising copywriter named Ian Milton (Dean Vivian) - Ray has picked up Ian because he was noticed watching high school girls from a distance. And Jo pushes Karen into meeting the unsuspecting Ian. The humor here, about pedophiles and what is legal (if Karen is not a minor, but only posing as one, is that unethical?), is delivered in machine-gun fashion; some jokes miss, but enough strike a target to build on what seems initially an extended skit.

The two couples mirror each other's wishes and disappointments. As Ian and Karen begin to see something in one another (despite her deception), Jo, who proposes marriage to Ray, sees him leave in fear. The director, Cynthia Levin, along with her innovative scenic designer, Tabitha Pease (one of several UMKC Theatre production collaborators on this production), emphasize this roundelay style by spinning a large boxy unit in the center of the stage, which swivels from set to set. It is a neat Alice in Wonderland-like touch, highlighting the curiouser and curiouser quality about what steps we will take for love.

The actors give the play its stylized authenticity and its real momentum. The "meet cute" scene between Karen and Ian at a coffee bar nicely plays off on her age deception / discrepancy. She reads Being and Nothingness, which surprises Ian, who is busy coming up with fun facts to put on oatmeal boxes. Anna Safar's opposing need to express herself as a woman but hide herself as a young girl brings out a Cyrano-esque split sense of humor. And Dean Vivian, given the uncomfortable role of a suspected pervert, stands up and radiates warmth; his character's role is to define the idea that the more you know someone, the better you know yourself, too.

Vanessa Severo, whose character at first appears to be the lead and then steps back into a kind of supporting role - Joanna and Ray's complications are never in doubt - is the play's catalyst. With ease, she can play dumb or sexy or serious. She brings her whole character's emotions to her facial expressions; she can knit her eyebrows with the facility of a Warner Bros. cartoon character. Yet, in several brief scenes as the box set is turning and we can only dimly view the characters in shadow-light, Severo, whether making a quick joke or expressing Joanna's increasing sadness, needs only a brief glimpse to turn our hearts.

Green Whales plays at times like a Thurber short story about the war between the sexes. The author, however ranting and racy in contemporary fashion, is, it seems to me, just as old-fashioned as Thurber was about love in the Thirties and Forties - when it comes down to that bittersweet elixir that pours dangerously easily like Smirnoff, but tastes just like coffee - it may or may not be good for you. When Goethe wrote, "Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing," he might have drunk from the same glass that Lia Romeo shared with us three hundred years later. 

REVIEW:
The Unicorn Theatre
Green Whales
By Lia Romeo
Directed by Cynthia Levin
Runs March 5-March 28 (Reviewed Friday, March 5)
3828 Main Street, Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-531-PLAY or online at www.unicorntheatre.org


Top photo: Green Whales cast members Anna Safar and Vanessa Severo. Photo by Cynthia Levin.

By Steve Shapiro

Theatre Contributor (Past writer)
Steve Shapiro has been writing about the arts for over twenty-five years. He wrote and broadcast a weekly radio book review on KCUR-FM for ten years, and has contributed to NPR's Morning Edition book segment.

As a contributor to local publications such as KCMetropolis.org, KC Tribune.com, The Kansas City Star, Review, The Pitch, and Helicon 9, he has published essays and criticism on art, books, cinema, theater and the cultural Zeitgeist.

A chapter on the museum architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Steven Holl was published in the anthology, The Sixth Surface: Steven Holl Lights the Nelson-Atkins Museum (2007). On the side, he juggles Dachshunds and is available to moderate book groups. 

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