I love romance. So naturally I hate love stories. Romantic love stories have a tendency to lose the romance in the drudgery of cliche and predictability. The idea of art kills art. It’s much the same way for romance. Identify something as romance. Make it clearly labeled and the magic gets lost. And all too often the women in romantic fiction aren’t given too much to do. The stereotype there isn’t often a very flattering one. The woman in a romantic piece always seems to be defined by the romance where as the male romantic lead can have other things going on in their lives. This may be kind of a disingenuous characterization, but in my defense, I saw a really, really good romantic stage play last night. Seeing anything done really, really well makes everything else done in the same vein seem weak and uninspired.
Still Life isn’t exclusively a romance. (Alexander Dinelaris’ play runs something like 2 hours and 45 minutes and covers A LOT of ground. Much more than just the romance.) It was the romance that felt remarkably vivid for me, though. Particularly it was Amber Smith in the female romantic lead. Smith has breathed impressive depth into a variety of different characters over the years. This one is easily one of her more striking performances. There’s a deep, sophistocated and deeply enchanting interface that she’s been able to achieve with the character and it’s a lot of fun to watch. She’s playing someone far more sophisticated than the stereotypical romantic heroine. She's playing a photographer who hasn’t picked up a camera for a long time. Something awful happened and she just can’t do it. So she’s at a gallery showing some of her work and she runs into this guy--he’s a nice guy who works in advertising. They hit it off. It becomes romantic. Dinelaris does a really good job of sneaking-up on the romance and tricking it into feeling real onstage, but that would be nothing if i t weren’t for the fact that Smith and male romantic lead Mateo Genovesi do such a good job of picking-up the script and carrying it in all kinds of interesting and unique directions.
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Soulstice Theatre’s production of Still Life runs April 4th through 19th at the Keith Tamsett Theater on 3770 South Pennsylvania Avenue in St. Francis. A concise, comprehensive review runs in the next print edition of the Shepherd-Express. For ticket reservations, visit Soulstice Theatre online.
