Theater review: Curtainbox's trio of monologues captures life, death
Theater is, at its core, all about telling stories.
And a trio of stories is expertly told by the new-to-this-area Curtainbox Theatre Co. in the excellent comedic drama “Three Viewings.”
Each of the monologues takes place in a funeral parlor in Pittsburgh, but aside from occasional references to characters and locations, they don’t intersect.
The first, “Tell-Tale” comes from Emil (David Bonde), a mortician who longs for a female Realtor who cruises funerals trying to score listings from the bereaved. His monologue takes place over a year, when his infatuation goes from a constant mantra of “I love you,” hoping she’ll turn around in time to see him say it, to an awkward lunch date. His unrequited love takes a detour by the end of the piece, and he ends up with a keepsake from the woman.
In the middle piece, “The Thief of Tears,” an L.A. party girl named Mac (company co-founder Kimberly Kurtenbach Furness) has made a sideline out of stealing jewelry off corpses in caskets, but faces her greatest challenge in coming home for the funeral of her grandmother. Inquisitive family members question her on the whereabouts of her husband and children, but their fates become chillingly clear by the end of the monologue.
The finale, “Thirteen Things About Ed Carpolotti,” has widow Virginia (Corinne Johnson) thrust into the presidency of her husband’s construction company, along with the inherited debts that come with it. Her problems continue to mount until a ransom note-type letter is delivered to her, threatening to tell the world a baker’s dozen list of facts about her husband.
Three swings. Three hits.
Each monologue is excellent, and director Daniel Sheridan shows contrasting styles in each performance.
Bonde (who has directed several shows but, at least according to our files, has not been on stage locally since 1990) excellently portrays the forlorn mortician, his heart aching to have her. He twitches around the simple set (a settee with a side table) in each of the separate parts of his monologue, balancing the personal and professional feelings of the character.
Furness — most recently adding to her resume with several shows at Circa ‘21 Dinner Playhouse — is the most animated of the three, detailing her thievery of the jewelry of total strangers. She has the most conversational style of the three, acting out the parts of various characters and relatives, and slowly and deliberately placing the puzzle pieces of playwright Jeffrey Hatcher’s script into alignment.
Johnson, a veteran of nearly 20 years as a theater director at St. Ambrose University, tells the widow’s story while stationary in one spot on the loveseat, drawing both the angst and melancholy of her husband’s unfinished business, leading to a finale that had several in the audience in tears. What could have been played as a Reader’s Digest anecdote was handled with aplomb by Johnson.
The intimate show was nicely staged in the basement of St. Ambrose’s Galvin Fine Arts Center, in a “black box theater” arrangement that lets the audience fully soak in the expressions and small gestures of the three-member cast.
Although it’s a trio of stories that have death as the foundation, they’re all life-afirming in one way or another.
They’re stories you’re tempted to tell yourself — I know I’ve repeated the gist of them several times already — but not as well as the three expert performers who will hold you enthralled for 90
minutes.
If you go
What: “Three Viewings” by Curtainbox Theatre Company
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, June 20-21; 3 p.m. Sunday, June 22
Where: St. Ambrose Studio Theatre, beneath Allaert Auditorium, Galvin Fine Arts Center, Davenport
How much: $12.
Information: (563) 650-8121
David Burke can be contacted at (563) 383-2400 or dburke@qctimes.com. Comment on this review at qctimes.com.