Macha Monkey's
"Melancholy Play"
Fridays-Saturdays, May 7-22, 8 p.m.
Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave
$12; 206/860-2970
www.machamonkey.org
Local group Macha Monkey's production of the Sarah Ruhl farce "Melancholy Play" is over the top and down the other side.
   Rather than allowing the audience to make its own decisions on where the jokes lie, the Macha Monkeys underscore everything, rarely letting a moment pass without shouting "THIS IS FARCE, LOOK HOW ABSURD THIS IS." Which, of course, makes everything in the script less funny.
Prewitt and Willott
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  Desiree Prewitt plays Tilly, a bank teller who suffers from melancholia. Roy Stanton takes on an alfredo-thick accent as Lorenzo, a vaguely European therapist who falls in love with Tilly. Frank the tailor (Douglas Willott) and Frances the hairstylist (Kate Jaeger) also fall for Tilly  and her strangely alluring psuedo-depression, as does Joan, a British nurse. As the latter, Melissa Brown  is consistently funny, with a nice deadpan style; she scores by keeping things small, where everyone else is supersizing.
    Prewitt has a very nice stage presence and timing, though her delivery tends to be shouted. Willott and Jaeger both have their best moments in the last third of the play, when the hyper-active direction finally slows down.
    Director Kristina Sutherland appears to be from the obsessive/compulsive school of theater, directing even the smallest movements; particularly in an opening montage, but also through much of the play, Sutherland seems to be making puppets of the actors, having them do all sorts of strange movements. It's an interesting thought, wildly overblown. Campiness steadily grows through the cracks, best evidenced in a "Batman"-style fight scene.
     It would have all been much funnier, played straight. Sutherland perhaps underestimated her strong cast, thinking the actors needed a great deal of help to show how funny the play is. They strain to hold up the director's constant quotation marks.
     As mentioned above, after being over the top for most of the play, the cast comes down over the other side, playing things in a much more natural manner in the final leg of "Melancholy Play." It's much better, that way.
Stanton and Prewitt