By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
No one will ever be comparing the restaurant-centered “Slow Food” to “My Dinner With Andre,” but this newest play reading in Arizona Theatre Company's virtual season of COVID conscious productions is a frothy concoction of light-hearted humor with a generous helping of sketch comedy on the side.
The setting is late evening at a moderately posh Greek restaurant in Palm Springs where a middle-aged New York couple, Peter (Joel Van Liew) and Irene (Daina Griffith) on vacation, have come to celebrate their wedding anniversary – the first since their two children both went off to college.
As brand new empty-nesters, Peter and Irene aren't sure if it is OK to enjoy this freshly minted freedom or feel guilty about enjoying themselves. But then their over-the-top waiter Stephen (Brian Beacock) arrives determined to orchestrate the perfect dinner at their table, whether these two weary travelers want it or not.
Never mind that Peter is a straight-forward Samuel Adams beer man who couldn't care less if anything is locally sourced. But then Stephen (never call him Steve) gets doubly apoplectic when Irene insists on ordering the spanakopita – a dish so common Stephen feels it completely unworthy of his extreme knowledge of the menu.
So the intrepid waiter enthusiastically launches into suggesting many other choices more worthy of their consideration, if only they would just take the time to think about it.
But that's only the first hurdle. The playwright Wendy MacLeod has much more in mind for this battle between the server and those being served.
While Van Liew and Griffith do a thorough job of covering the familiar peaks and valleys of their husband/wife roles, always feigning politeness until they succumb to the rage of frustration, it is Beacock who must do the most stretching to keep his deliberately flouncy character believable enough to get his laughs.
MacLeod (“The House of Yes,” also adapted to film, and several other plays) does have a crisp ear for contemporary humor and pop culture rhythms. These dinner conversation routines may not plumb the depths of marital significance, but they are consistently funny.
What MacLeod does best is keep our heads spinning in a constant tennis match of point-counterpoint as superficially polite conversations clash and veer through the familiar restaurant ritual of ordering drinks, picking a salad, choosing an entree and also finding time to wonder if staying married only proved they lacked the imagination to make other choices.
ATC's own artistic director Sean Daniels and Associate Artistic Director Chanel Bragg are listed as co-directors.
“I've been lucky enough to direct several world premieres of Wendy MacLeod, including “Slow Food,” Daniels said in a press release. “I'm thrilled for the first thing I direct for ATC to be a true bit of comedic genius by someone I admire so much.”
While “Slow Food” does inadvertently remind us that dining out will never be what it was in all the generations before COVID came along, the static set-up of two people sitting at a table with a waiter standing between them perfectly fits the Zoom-like virtual format of three separate faces seen simultaneously on three separate screens.
This definitely adds to the humor in the script, while making this ATC series a more valued reminder that saving theater is really what these shows are all about.
The streaming video is available without charge until 5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 19, on the ATC website as well as Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo. For details on viewing “Slow Food” and making contributions to the theater company, visit https://www.arizonatheatre.org
While there is no charge to stream “Slow Food” and the other online play readings, ATC is depending on the support of its audience for contributions to defray expenses. To directly support the theater company, donate at: https://donate.arizonatheatre.org/c…/we-are-atc-2020/c278966
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