Photo by Sara Risley
Theatrical Tendencies delicately coaxes disarmingly open emotions onstage with Stop Kiss. Diana Son’s tender exploration of the complexities of romantic love finds a deeply engaging home on the intimate stage of Soulstice Theatre as Mark Neufang directs a romantic drama that is compellingly brought to life by Amanda Carson and Amber Smith.
An endearingly vulnerable Carson plays a long-time New Yorker named Callie. Smith is irresistibly fearless as Sara: a teacher who has just moved to town to work in a public school in the Bronx. Carson and Smith have an intricately intriguing dynamic onstage that begins to assert itself the moment Callie meets Sara. There’s a very sophisticated interplay between Sara’s courage and Callie’s nervousness that Carson and Smith bring together in a deft and heartfelt comedic contortion.
Scenes alternate between the awkward comedy of emerging romance and heavy drama after a vicious tragedy. The narrative flits back and forth before and after the two women get attacked in the midst of their first kiss. Callie suffered minor injuries. Sara wasn’t so lucky. With a relationship only having begun to form between the two women, Callie must find the courage to assert her love for a slowly recovering Sara or lose her to family and an ex-boyfriend who have known her for far longer. Carson and Smith have developed an interaction that is inescapably appealing. By the end of the story, the desire to see Callie and Sara persevere becomes achingly intense. With Stop Kiss, Neufang and company foster a deeply heroic contemporary romance that cannot be recommended enough.
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Through March 28 at the Soulstice Theatre, 3770 S. Pennsylvania Ave. For tickets, visit theatricaltendencies.com.
