Stella and Lou

Terror used to be a word saved for make believe movies that made our skin turn into chicken skin.

Then it became the everyday and all too real word for unthinkable hatred for a country and its citizens.

Last night, I watched terror reveal itself for 75 minutes at People's Light and Theatre Company.  It was neither the movie or the hatred kind.

It was the "love kind" and our paralyzing fear of it.

"Stella and Lou" sits the audience down in a South Philly taproom, appropriately called Lou's (the arch rival to The Shamrock Bar) and lets us listen in on the wee hour conversation between a divorced, fun loving, ER nurse, Stella, and a bar owner/bartender, widower Lou, both in the second half of their lives. 

As they meander through all too familiar territory of small talk, they cha-cha back and forth, slowly turning over delicate feelings.  Lou's adeptness at turning those emotions back over does not thwart Stella, but he is like a frozen tundra of emotion, and she, a matchbook being lit, and relit against it, relentlessly. 

A third voice, Donnie, younger, newly engaged, tipsy, bursts in and out of the bar (and men's room) acting out overwhelmed feelings regarding the upcoming plans for his overdone wedding.  Lastly, a fourth, ghost character is longtime bar patron, Reilly, at whose funeral the show kicks off as Donnie sweats and struggles through the eulogy he does not want to give.

I don't know local playwright Bruce Graham, but he sure knows me - or, rather, us - as he offers up these characters to reveal the inner terror of exposing our hearts.  He manages to accomplish this mostly through humor.  But as middle of the night conversations often reveal, when the real feelings come out, the powerful quiet sobers us up. 

Actors Marcia Saunders, Tom Teti, and Scott Greer make us trust them immediately as we sit bar-side all the while laughing and aching with/for them. Like hopping off the high dive, we jump with hope, fear, eyes squeezed shut as we consider giving ourselves to someone else.  What will be the consequences?  Can I handle the consequences? And most importantly, I am afraid to be hurt- again!

I felt this same way when I saw another Graham play - the one man show - "The Philly Fan" with Tom McCarthy.  We are invited to open our hearts with these characters, yet we are safe in our seats. We are hopeful those on stage will also land gently by the evening's end. It's always a leap worth taking. http://asubjectforconsideration.blogspot.com/2011/11/nature-of-sports-dreams.html

 I am a Graham fan and look forward to seeing more of his many offerings.  He knows joy, pain, pathos and he's unafraid of the cocktail they create.  

So, head down the street to Lou's and listen in on the conversation.  It's a terrifying hoot!

"Stella and Lou" performances run at People's Light through 8/23/15  http://peopleslight.org/