Actors give life to 'Frankie and Johnny'
Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, through Oct. 23 at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's Shimberg Playhouse. Show times are 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 4 p.m. Sunday. $16.50 Thursdays, $19.50 Fridays and Sundays, $21.50 Saturdays; all plus service charge. Call (813) 229-7827 or go to tbpac.org.
By MARTY CLEAR
Published October 9, 2005
What makes Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune so beautiful is its lack of beauty.
Terrence McNally's play is essentially a love story, but it tugs on the conventions of the genre more than it tugs on the heartstrings. Instead of the standard graceful narrative and impossibly witty dialogue, McNally proffers content, characters and language that are awkward, plain and occasionally even brutal.
It's a romance almost totally lacking in magic, but full of compromise and negotiation. It examines people who are utterly ordinary, and that in itself makes the play extraordinary.
That can make for a tricky balance for actors taking the roles of the titular characters, two drab and exhausted middle-aged schlubs spending the night together after a first date. It's essential that they're unexceptional, but just as essential that they're charismatic. They're both onstage for virtually the entire play, and their characters are not inherently likable, so it's entirely up to the actors to make us care about them.
The current production by Jobsite Theater works well, largely because of two tightly targeted performances. Ami Salle Corley and Paul Potenza have ample chemistry together, but what really impresses is the relationship they have with their dramatis personae. Potenza seems to know and care about Johnny, the overbearing ex-con who seeks salvation in a new romance. Corley likewise seems inhabited by Frankie, the weary waitress who would gladly accept a life of boredom if it meant a lack of conflict.
Both actors make their characters dynamic without sacrificing their essential grayness. It's not an easy thing to do, and many productions of this play fail for that reason.
It's a simple, straightforward play, intriguing but not especially profound. Director David Jenkins, appropriately, takes a direct, no-frills approach. The script is excessively wordy - it's almost a two-hour debate - but Jenkins and the cast keep the movement flowing so the talkiness never becomes oppressive or even apparent.
The lone set, Frankie's studio apartment, designed by Brian Smallheer and dressed by Erin Dunlap, is mostly utilitarian, but has intriguing elements that show Frankie's occasional attempts to add some spark to her life.