A Tart 'n Tangy 'Lemonade' at New Jersey Rep

Published in the Asbury Park Press

By TOM CHESEK
CORRESPONDENT

As this touch-and-go Jersey Shore spring edges its way from frigidly finicky to tentatively torrid, one might be seized by a yen for some good ole lemonade. Then again, one might also be possessed of a hankering for a good ole sex comedy.

Well, now there's no need to drive all over creation in an attempt to satisfy that craving at curbside -- the lemonade, that is. If the evening of April 23 was any indication, the cool quencher is available in the lobby of New Jersey Repertory Company's Lumia Theatre in Long Branch -- peddled from a little stand that was manned, at least for a portion of opening night, by author (and former Middletowner) Michael T. Folie. The company playwright-in-residence was on hand because the folks at NJ Rep (the same people who've premiered at least five major Folie works) were staging the East Coast debut of his funny four-character sex comedy -- also called "Lemonade" -- for an appreciative audience that seemed thirsty for something a bit more tart and tangy than the usual watered-down dinner-theater fare.

"Lemonade" the show takes its title from the observations of dedicated wife and mom Jane (Dana Benningfield), who muses that sex is like lemonade, in that it's naturally bitter and requires the sweetening of romance -- and that, like lemonade, you don't want it all the time.

This is just one character's opinion, of course. Jane, a naturally radiant creature who's put her glamorous art-world career on hold to raise an infant daughter, happens to be married to public-relations pro Carl (Bruce Faulk), a stockily built and self-absorbed cad to whom sex is more like a tankful of high-test in the Hummer. When not busy grappling with his roles as helpful hubby and doting dad (not to mention a devotee of the hyper-fashionable Asian lifestyle discipline Chu Wa), Carl has been carrying on an extended fling with his client -- and Jane's old college buddy -- Betsy (Stephanie Dorian), a driven type who seems every bit the polar opposite of his sweet, sacrificing spouse.

Carl's chance meeting with old acquaintance Jim (Ben Masur) -- the two men are introduced playing a tableside game in which they assign dollar values to female passersby -- leads to an invitation to a dinner party; an event for which the guest list boils down to just Jim (himself a follower of competing Asian discipline 'Sha Zen') and, much to Carl's dismay, Betsy. Naturally, Jane thinks it would be a cute idea to fix Betsy up with Jim.

While the Jim-and-Betsy thing works on the surface (the two enjoy a sexually robust relationship of their own), it's complicated by Jim's knowledge of the Betsy-Carl affair -- as well as by the fact that Jim's first glimpse of Jane "sets his insides vibrating." This is just the start of the festivities, as it turns out, since Jim and Betsy are openly scheming to split up the Carl-Jane marriage and divvy up the spoils for themselves.

Although things really accelerate from that point, it's not giving too much away to suggest that each participant in this four-sided equation winds up with the best possible partner by play's end. And, even if the plot seemingly spins off in a dozen different directions at once, Folie keeps the tightly-constructed comedy's focus zeroed in on the way we messed-up moderns view our relationships through the distorted prisms of our own pathetic egos. In other words, "Lemonade" is as cold and sour, yet refreshing, as its namesake.

In his first-ever NJ Rep outing, director Evan Bergman puts his talented professional cast -- all but one of them newcomers to the Lumia stage -- through some precision maneuvers. Working up a sweat as the character most held up for ridicule by the author, Bruce Faulk invests his numerous scenes with a comic intensity that somehow never paints Carl as a truly bad guy, no matter how much we know not to trust him at his word (his first-act confrontation with Betsy, rife as it is with pusillanimous back-pedaling and fad-therapy doubletalk, is a particular gem).

While Ben Masur's Jim comes across as the Nice Guy simply by default, his character (an insufferable macrobiotic dieter, to boot) wears his ulterior motives on his sleeve and ultimately seems to be acting as impulsively as Carl. Sure, the male characters come off looking pretty silly here -- but that adds up to more laugh-getting opportunities for Faulk and Masur, particularly in their slapsticky "Chu Wa vs. Sha Zen" showdown.

Still, neither Jane nor Betsy is entirely clear on exactly who they are or what they want -- and Dorian projects both comic vulnerability, and a confidence that makes her Betsy a completely believable magnet for the two insecure guys. Although Benningfield is seemingly saddled with the play's most "boring" part -- she's forced to spend much of her time fussing with a baby carriage -- the NJ Rep mainstay comes off most like a real person; warm and caring and generous at heart, but also prickly and not averse to using the aforementioned pram as a deadly weapon.

Make no mistake, this sharply written comedy of couples is no static talkfest; the silly "slow martial arts" duel is followed immediately by a frenetic cat fight scene, and the action-packed second act is further punctuated by a well-staged interlude in which the characters have at each other via the magic of cell phones. A succession of short, sharp scenes - coupled with the lighting and sound work of Jeff Greenberg and Merek Royce Press -- keep the actors in constant motion across Jo Winiarski's versatile, vaguely Metropolitan Home-looking set design.