Red Barn Theater Review / Steve Martin’s Meteor Shower

Is laugh out loud funny!

By Joanna Brady

Until I saw Picasso at the Lapin Agile at the Red Barn a couple of years ago, I always thought of Steve Martin as an actor who decided to write, rather than the other way around. Through that play, I came to know that he began his career as a writer of comedy skits for TV back in the ‘60s—long before he became a performer.

What he has done for the past couple of decades is to rediscover his formidable talents for writing. For the record, the prolific Martin has no less than 78 book titles on Goodreads, the biggest on-line book club: novels, books of humorous essays, and plays. With Meteor Shower, he is ensconced into his old talent, playwriting up a storm of scattered craziness that will assuredly make you laugh out loud.

Meteor Shower, which starred Amy Schumer (as Corky) on Broadway, is probably Martin’s wackiest effort yet. In the true tradition of the French ‘absurd’ theater led by oddball Franco-Romanian mid 20th century writer, Eugene Ionesco, Martin, now aged 72, takes a perfectly normal situation, i.e. a young couple hosting another couple for drinks in their home, and turns it into a play with a multitude of weird twists and turns.

The opening scene takes place in Ojai, California in 1993, in the valley outside Los Angeles. At the upper-middle-class home of characters Corky and Norm (Elena Devers and Dave Bootle), the couple busy themselves with preparation for visitors. Martin has laced the early dialogue between the two, who are in a fragile marriage, with lots of uptight wording and new age psychobabble—they are ‘Valley’, after all.

The couple anxiously await their Santa Barbara guests, the breezy, tell-it-like-it-is Gerald Newman (played by Michael Castellano) and Laura, his bombshell wife (Susannah Wells) a former editor of Vogue , whom the host couple imagine to be sophisticated, wordly people. These are not old friends, merely people Norm invited over after casually meeting Gerald at tennis.

Corky and Norm want to put on a good front for the couple, whom they imagine to be so much cooler than they are. Ostensibly, the invitation was extended to Gerald and Laura so they could all watch a once-in-a-lifetime meteor shower; but Corky and Norm also hope to meet other interesting couples through them.

Even before the guests settle in and the meteor shower begins, it becomes clear that there is something weird about Gerald and Laura. When they arrive, they immediately start putting down their hosts and making them feel ill at ease with their quarreling, their rudeness, their bragging, and general ugliness. What’s more, they seem to be predatory swingers, come to teach the country bumpkins a thing or two about life in the fast lane. Meteor Shower bears Martin’s unmistakably funny stamp from the get-go with some great one-liners in this scene.

This far into the piece, everything is relatively simple. But then, over the course of the rest of the play, the scenes are played out in layers, with the actors repeating their arrival and changing character within the boundaries of their roles, like brilliant chameleons. The dialogue gets funnier with each changeover, and even falling meteors have hilarious consequences.

Unexpectedly, as the play progresses, we’re in a kind of twilight zone. It’s bizarre and inventive; a surreal time bender. The docile and fragile become mean and predatory. The overbearing become submissive and wimpy. Character becomes interchangeable, and Martin’s lines get progressively more bizarre. But the ending is cathartic and satisfying. Don’t expect to make a lot of sense of the pandemonium. Just sit back and enjoy the ride!

The production is ably directed by the very talented Joy Hawkins, and all four of the actors are just terrific, no matter which brand of character they are playing. Stage Manager is Annie Miners, Gary and Jack McDonald did the sets and lighting, Carmen Rodriguez, costumes and props. Set furniture: Jane Gardner Interiors.

Meteor Showers is a great way to wind down your theater season. Be sure to see this one!

The play will run Tuesday, March 26th through Sat., April 20. NOTE: The performance opening night is at 8:00, all other nights, curtain is at 7:30 p.m. The Red Barn is located at 319 Duval St. (Rear) in Key West. Tickets available online, or call (305) 296-9911 For further information, call Bob Bowersox at 302-540-6102.

(Joanna Brady is a local writer, author of the historical Key West novel, The Woman at the Light, published by St. Martin’s Press)

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