As GableStage audiences continue to assess what its new artistic director Bari Newport has in mind for the troupe, they are receiving mixed signals.
Its recent production of the challenging, racially themed The White Card suggested it will be business as usual for the company that built its reputation on tough-minded, cutting-edge drama. But now it drastically switches gears to produce a featherweight sitcom called Boca, which pokes predictable fun at the luxury condo senior set of Boca Raton.
From wherever Newport’s predecessor, the late Joe Adler, happens to be right now, you have to assume he is looking down and wincing.
In 10 brief scenes, playwright Jessica Provenz introduces us to the denizens of Boca Oasis, the upscale, all-white community of former New Yorkers and other Northern transplantees. Presumably they have moved to South Florida for the retirement life of pickleball, garden puttering, card-playing and clubhouse politics. Picture Jerry Seinfeld’s Del Boca Vista, but a lot less funny.
A cast of five ambles through the skits, playing 11 stereotypical characters, largely by changing wigs, tropical shirts and workout garb. Pitching the production to a cartoonish level is director Julianne Boyd, artistic director of Massachusetts’ Barrington Stage Company, where Boca premiered last year.
The scenes are linked by a handful of running gags, which only serve to accentuate the sitcom nature of the material. For instance, consider Marty (Robert Zuckerman) and Mo (Avi Hoffman), a pair of alter kakers who delight in dissing each other’s automobiles – a Porche and a Tesla – while waiting like Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon for the valet parker to arrive.
Or the women of Boca Oasis – serial widow Janet (Deborah Kondelik), divorcee Elaine (Barbara Bonilla) and advance planner Susan (Beverly Blanchette) – constantly mulling the appropriate wait time before cozying up to the latest newly available widower. Or there’s the mysterious disappearance and much missed supply of the artificial sweetener Stevia from the clubhouse dining hall. One wonders whether sound designer Alexander Sovronsky considered adding a laugh track to the production.
Susan, a former kindergarten teacher, often speaks through a screechy-voiced sock puppet. (Don’t ask.) She gathers her female friends, post-pickleball, for a poker session, with the victor winning dibs on Susan’s podiatrist husband after she passes away. Hey, why leave such matters to chance?
Later, in what comes close to serving as a plot, Susan decides to challenge Deann, the current, pushy condo board president, for the job. In one of the production’s rare clever touches, Blanchette plays both competing candidates.
Another narrative thread involves Iris (Kondelik) and Louise (Bonilla), creeping in Boca traffic in Iris’s husband Mo’s Tesla. Craving freedom, they decide to detour to the open road and floor it, Thelma and Louise-style.
Then there’s the dilemma of recent widower Bruce (Hoffman), who returns from a date to find assertive Elaine (Bonilla) in his home, eager to feed him her lasagna and get romantic with him. But when he turns her down, she pulls a gun on him. (Are we laughing yet?)
Boca concludes with an ensemble scene for the entire cast and most of the characters, a farcical door-slammer with some nifty quick costume changes. It centers on why Susan is unavailable for a dinner party she is throwing and why her husband Robbie (Zuckerman) has their apartment as cold as a meat locker. Chances are that you will be ahead of the macabre punchline long before playwright Provenz wants you to be.
Zuckerman is the lone holdover from the Barrington Stage production of Boca, and the most successful at playing against the script’s overly broad comic inclinations. The others could stand to dial down the schtick a few notches, though Hoffman manages a menschy authenticity and Blanchette has fun with her dueling politico roles.
Veteran GableStage scenic designer Lyle Baskin has come up with an amusing triptych set, a trio of playing spaces in lemon, pink and sea foam – very Boca. And costume designer Camilla Haith lends a knowing hand in her only slightly exaggerated upscale Boca leisure wardrobe.
On balance, the show gets as good a production as Provenz could wish for, but the material is simply not up to what GableStage standards have been and, hopefully, will continue to be.
BOCA, GableStage, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables. Through Sunday. $35-$65. Call 305-445-1119 or visit www.gablestage.org.