Mud People At Mary-Arrchie Places A Tall Order, Comes Up Short

By Julienne Bilker in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 12, 2009 7:20PM

photo of Michele Gorman, Mary Jo Bolduc and Dereck Garner by Shannon Clausen

Mary-Arrchie Theatre's Mud People is billed as “a hilarious and altogether uplifting story that highlights the importance of hope and faith in a world full of harshness and cynicism.” The Midwest premiere of this Keith Huff play does have a few hilarious moments. And it’s ultimately uplifting. And there is a lot of talk about hope and faith. And there are some very harsh and cynical characters. However, the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts.

The key players in Mud People are Barb (Mary Jo Bolduc), her teenage daughter Tooley (Michele Gorman) and Mitchley (Richard Cotovsky), the owner of the rundown diner (expertly designed by William Anderson) in which all three live and work. He is a tyrannical bull of a man who may or may not be Tooley’s father. A mysterious stranger (Dereck Garner) drops in on the family and changes everything. There are many tired metaphors in the basic concept, but the real problem is that Barb, Tooley and Mitchley each seem to have come from a different play.

Bolduc’s put-upon waitress and mother who wishes for death every five minutes reeks of Sam Shepard; Cotovsky, whose character is supposedly threatening and dangerous, reads more like a Shakespearean fool; and Gorman seems to have walked off the set of a Disney Channel TV show. In fact, her exasperated eye-rolling and borderline-superficial portrayal had us convinced that she was actually thirteen, until we checked the program and discovered that she, well, isn’t. Bolduc and Cotovsky clearly have some real talent, but they have both been unfortunately handled by director Carol Lorenzo Garcia.

The scene that opens act two was easily our favorite in the show. As Buzzy, a dimwitted ne’er-do-well whose attempts to write for the local newspaper have made him the joke of the town, Dan Behrendt comes close to grounding the show and setting a clear tone for its remainder. But although the second act was much stronger than the first, one scene can’t redeem an entire show. The ending was jarring and felt somewhat out-of-place, effectively blurring the already unclear point-of-view projected. If we had to sum up our experience in three words: It was muddy.

Mud People, through July 12, Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company at Angel Island, 735 W. Sheridan. Tickets $18-$22, 773-871-0442.