Whole Against the Sky, at Trumpet Vine Theatre
Paul Donnelly’s new play, Whole Against the Sky, has much going for it. The dialogue is witty, the characterizations are sharp, and there are scenes of enormous emotional authenticity and power. The play is still a few rewrites away from being the strong theater it could be, however. In particular, the flabby ending disappoints.
It is a measure of the hard, and good, work Donnelly has done so far on his plot to compare the play’s description on the Trumpet Vine website to what we actually see on the stage. Jack Rheingold (Jon Townson), a gay lawyer living in Washington, has returned to his Cincinnati hometown to witness the remarriage of his hard-bitten, domineering mother Carol (Jean Hudson Miller) to Ken, a right-wing Christian activist. (Returning from a pre-nuptial party, Jack observes, “I was the only one there who hadn’t heard Rush Limbaugh that morning”.) Jack and his big sister Linda (Ellie Nicoll) cordially detest their mother; Jack detests Linda’s manic-depressive husband Greg (Gerald R. Browning) and you can be certain that Linda will detest Ken as soon as she meets him. Regrettably, she never has the chance, as Ken gets a surprise one-way ticket to verify his religious beliefs the day she arrives.
