All aboard for UDM’s ‘Bus Stop’
DETROIT, Mich. –The Theatre Company at The University of Detroit Mercy is showing that a step back to a play of a different era can be as welcome as a hot cup of coffee in a snow storm as it brings William Inge’s Bus Stop back to life at the Marlene Boll Theatre at the downtown YMCA.
Bus Stop, first produced in New York City in 1955, can be funny, and finds the natural funny in the lives and chatter of everyday folks thrown together in a diner as they wait out a snowstorm. It is also rough and violent at times, and a bit uncomfortable to watch. Yep, something for everyone and showing all sides of people.
Stranded at a diner near Kansas City with one another, pie, eggs and ham to kill time, the action is focused on the conflict between youthful and irascible Bo Decker (Dalton Hahn) and a dim, self-styled chanteuse Cherie (Autumn Russell). Cherie has been living on Bo’s ranch, but she’s done with the rough treatment and machismo that Bo dishes out, and wants to go her own way. Bo’s not taking it well, forcing Cherie to take refuge in the protection of Sheriff Will Masters (Patrick Loos). Meanwhile, Bo’s older pal Virgil (Pat Caporuscio) does his best to try and settle Bo down and teach him how to use his words instead of his hands all the time, made rough by roping and cow-punching.
A sub-plot is the relationship budding between waitress Elma Duckworth (Savanah Wright) and burned-out lush Dr. Gerald Lymon (Sam Pollak) who impresses the young, sweet, restless girl with his Harvard and Oxford studied life and vocabulary, but who clearly has a dark side he fights to contain.
Directed by Andrew Papa, Bus Stop is a love story sung, not literally, in parts. Adding to the inter-related love threads is the heat between diner owner Grace (Jahnay Clabon) and bus-driver Carl (Joel Mitchell) for whom she has a strong itch. They disappear for a good part of the play to scratch it.
Hahn as Bo is irritating. That’s the character, though. He’s an obtuse jerk, and when he challenges the authority and capacity of the Sheriff to safeguard Cherie, we root for a sound beating. Hahn’s youth and raw aspects show, but this is probably the ideal character for him to cut some teeth. Russell plays Cherie as beaten up and older than her years, not very bright, but prideful and not willing to settle for just any man with a fat wallet in his pants. These two young actors are surrounded by an ensemble of practiced pros. Loos brings just the right gravitas and authority to the diner. Caporuscio’s Virgil is a smooth, sweet welcome foil to Bo’s peppery presence, his performance compromised only by his lack of harmonica skills (Virgil is often played by an actor who plays guitar). Clabon and Mitchell’s roles aren’t very complicated, and that’s the point. They deliver on being just randy for each other and the steady-eddies of the diner.
Pollak and Wright have good chemistry. He plays the worldly, lost drunk convincingly. Wright is wide-eyed, hopeful, curious, sweet and surprises all with her off-book recitation of Shakespeare. She wants love, and thinks she has found a fleeting version of it in Pollak, though we all know it will dissolve like the sugar in a cup of coffee.
The set, designed by Melinda Pacha, is extremely well done in the Boll space, perfectly evoking a bus stop diner, from the chalkboard schedule, to the coffee station and the tables and chairs.
Bus Stop is Papa’s directorial debut, having recently joined the faculty at UDM. It’s a job well done, and from the company as a whole.
Bus Stop doesn’t have any zombies or bloodshed, and its not as sharp-tongued or modern as Mamet. Inge liked to explore uncomplicated people for his themes, even if love, his main theme here, can be as complicated as anything we face in life.