Theater Review: Despite Valiant Performances, Drama Guild’s ‘Lovers’ Shows Its Age

Families, friends and lovers gathered at Chatham Drama Guild for the opening night of “Lovers and Other Strangers” last Friday. Marking the opening of the Guild’s 2024 season, this show is a blast from the past.

Offering glimpses into five apartments in 1960s and ‘70s New York City occupied by vastly different pairs of lovers, the play shows an uglier side of romance. Opening with a coercive one-night stand, transitioning to a married couple dealing with a shifting power dynamic, followed by an ugly almost-breakup, the first act alone catches audiences off guard with a disturbing look at three dysfunctional couples. The second act is no better, featuring a closeted gay couple struggling with the difficulties of a hidden relationship and closing with a revisitation of the third couple seen in act one. This scene takes place years in the future after the unstable couple has been married and is now searching for a divorce while the parents of the young husband attempt to save their child’s marriage.

These disturbing vignettes attempt to make light of issues such as physical and emotional abuse, marital rape and homophobia in a way audiences can only hope is intended to be satirical.

The first couple, Jerry (Tim Moynihan) and Brenda (Rachel Walman) are an unlikely pairing of young people. Moynihan portrays the eagerness and persistence of a brutish man on a mission, while Walman embodies the stereotypical over-intellectualizing feminist flower child of the age. In a goofy and playful back and forth, the two offer a great performance; so great you can almost ignore the nonconsensual undertones of the encounter, with energy similar to the Christmas classic “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” as Moynihan’s character wears down Walman’s into compliance.

Johnny and Wilma, the second couple, played by Peter Eldridge and Kristen Winn, are cozy in their nicely decorated apartment when the audience finds them. Winn portrays an emotionally neglected working wife with desperation and exasperation perfect for the role, while Eldridge embodies her professionally unsuccessful and insecure husband with an immaturity, bruteness and abrasion that has audiences horrified. A realistic and upsetting vision of married life, this snapshot was still able to score a few laughs from the audience as Eldridge and Winn’s physical presence was able to carry a comedic air, even if the plot itself was far from funny.

Next comes a young pair of to-be-weds, Joan and Richie. Their scene opens with a sleepy Joan, played by the talented Erica Morris, being awoken from a deep slumber by her frazzled and frenzied fiance, portrayed by Mark Roderick. Roderick plays the unfiltered, panicked, distrustful and unreliable young man with impressive energy, delivering a monologue that fills the majority of the scene. That is not to say Morris doesn’t deliver as well; despite speaking very little, her expression and body language convey the confusion, exhaustion and anxiety of a fiancée facing her partner’s cold feet.

Entering act two, the stage is transformed into a cramped bathroom, much too small for the two lovers bickering inside. Sal (John Hanright) and Hal (Matthew Freeman) play a pair of men in a long-term secret relationship. Hal, married with children, places the responsibility for his inability to divorce his wife on anyone but himself — including Sal, who Hal begs to leave and be with him out in the open. Hanright plays Sal as a loud, engaging, emotionally wrought individual longing for commitment on the part of Hal, who Freeman plays as whiny, manipulative and spineless, avoiding accountability with some impressive mental acrobatics.

To conclude the show, audiences revisit Joan and Richie. Years after they went through with their doomed engagement, the young couple is getting a divorce. The scene opens as Richie tells his parents about the impending end of his marriage, as his mother, Bea, and father, Frank, attempt to convince him to see it through. Portrayed by real-life married couple Ann and Fred Carpenter, Bea and Frank are clearly devoted to one another, playing the nagging parents with a tender yet pushy tone. While the performances are magnificent, once again the writing falls short, with jokes about infidelity and marital rape feeling too dated and insensitive to be funny.

The set design by Scott Hamilton is impressive, with a rotating platform that allows the stage to be transformed seamlessly into five different apartments, and Don Howell’s sound design enhances the atmosphere of the late ‘60s and ‘70s. Led by director Anna Marie Johansen and producer/stage manager Pam Banas, this production is shocking.

DETAILS:

“Lovers and Other Strangers”

At The Chatham Drama Guild, Crowell Road, Chatham

Through July 7

Information and reservations: 508-945-0510, www.chatdramaguild.org