Rallis (Derek Ahonen) and Debbie (Sarah Lemp) are at the end of their ropes in RANTOUL AND DIE (photo by Russ Rowland)
Cherry Lane Studio Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Through July 20, $51
212-989-2020
www.amoralists.com
www.cherrylanetheatre.org
One of the city’s best, most adventurous and unpredictable theater companies is currently presenting the first must-see show of the summer. The Amoralists, whose recent successes include The Bad and the Better, which squeezed twenty-six actors playing thirty-three characters onto one set, and HotelMotel, a pair of plays that took place around a bed in a room in the Gershwin Hotel, are now dazzling audiences in the tiny Cherry Lane Studio Theatre with the outrageously funny Rantoul and Die. Written by Mike & Molly creator and executive producer Mark Roberts, the play begins as sad-sack Rallis (Amoralists cofounder and associate artistic director Derek Ahonen) is being chastised by his best friend, Gary (Amoralists cofounder and associate artistic director Matthew Pilieci), for having tried to kill himself because his wife, Debbie (Sarah Lemp), is divorcing him. “I’m just looking for the sufferin’ to end. Can you understand that?” the depressed, tenderhearted Rallis says in a hysterically funny and pathetically whiny singsong voice. “I got nine kinds of misery livin’ inside of me right now.” When Debbie returns from her job at the local Dairy Queen, she laces into poor Rallis as well. “It’s very simple, Rallis,” she says. “I see your face and I think of the time I have wasted. The life I have pissed away on you. That fills me with hatred and rage, and therefore my interactions with you are less than nurturing. You get it?” In the second act, the trio is joined by cat lover Callie (Vanessa Vaché), Debbie’s boss at the DQ, a young woman with a rather sickeningly sweet view of life. “We all got stuff we ain’t proud of. And we have things that we are proud of,” Carrie tells Debbie. “Which one you choose to focus on is the difference between a smile and a frown.” As plot twists ensue, this black comedy about so-called white trash grows both deeper and darker, but the belly laughs never stop coming.
Debbie (Sarah Lemp) learns a little too much about her cat-loving DQ boss, Callie (Vanessa Vaché), in new Amoralists show (photo by Russ Rowland)
Over the course of about ninety minutes (plus intermission), director Jay Stull (Strange Heart, The Capables) includes four interludes in which each of the characters get their own moment to step out of the story and address the audience directly, sharing something personal or absurd that reveals more about them. The play is set in a ramshackle trailer-park-like house designed by Alfred Schatz, with garbage strewn all around and most of the action occurring on a couch at front and center. Each of the two acts starts with the lights out, with dialogue that ultimately equates sex with violence in clever, funny ways. The cast, all of whom have performed in multiple Amoralist productions previously — Ahonen also has written and/or directed several of the company’s shows — is clearly comfortable with one another, adding an involving intimacy in the already intimate Cherry Lane space. Roberts and Stull also avoid belittling the “white trash” setting, finding plenty of humor without being mean-spirited or obvious. Rantoul and Die is a brilliantly conceived and executed play that examines the darker side of human nature in beautifully bizarre ways.