Theatreworks has created a delicious confection in Palo Alto

Theatreworks presents SOUTHERN COMFORTS
A funny, poignant and real romance

This play tells the story of a widow and a widower who fall in love after a chance meeting during a thunderstorm. The story could have easily descended into the trite, the dialogue, too cute and the story line itself a farce if not for Joy Carlin’s excellent directing and the spot on performances of the two characters in this charming theatrical confection. Karen Grassle plays Amanda, a Southern belle with definite ideas, one of which is finding someone she enjoys with whom to live out the rest of her life. Her target is Gus, a conservative, stubborn old-school widower played with just the right touch by Edward Sarafian.
The repartee between these two characters is sharp, clear and full of adorable surprises. One false note from either one and the entire production would have descended into the ridiculous. Yet these two very talented stars elevate a clichéd script into something inspiring and even sublime. Here we have two people whose lives have not given them the rewards they expected for reasons they cannot fathom. Amanda even more than Gus is still curious and daring enough to take another chance. Poor Gus wonders what went wrong but isn’t about to do anything to figure it out. Enter the indomitable Amanda, determined to mold him into her next romance and the rest is as predictable as rain after a thunder clap.
A word here about Joy Carlin’s directorial touch. “Joy is a joy,” said Grassle. “It’s like having a master class in comedy with her.”
And more than that, Carlin knows when to pull out all the stops and when to downplay the histrionics the script could very well invite. She orchestrates the movement on stage like a sedate dance with perfect timing and precise co-ordination of the rhythms of speech and drama in the script.
“Playwright Kathleen Clark explores the dream of comfort, in a warm-hearted and knowing play about love,” said Robert Kelley, Theatreworks Artistic Director. “Perhaps it takes a lifetime of love, in many different forms to understand how much ‘comfort’ fulfills love’s promise. Comfort is love at ease, the secret gift we bring to and expect from any close relationship.”
Clark says this play was inspired by events in her own family and there is a veracity about the action that convinces us that these people are human beings just like us as they move through six months of their lives in 100 minutes of dialogue and action without intermission. The plot has a lot to say about what we really seek when we say we want to fall in love again. Gus says it best when he offers to take Amanda back to her home in Tennessee only because it would make her happy. “I never thought about making someone else happy before,” he says.
And maybe that’s why this production is such a pleasure. It shows us how making someone else happy is such a satisfying road to our own happiness at any age and any time in our lives.

IF YOU GO:
SOUTHERN COMFORTS is presented by Theatreworks through Sunday, March 30, 2008, with Saturday & Sunday matinees.
WHERE: Lucie Stern Theater; 1305 Middlefield Rd. Palo Alto
TICKETS: $20-$56, discounts for students, seniors etc
650 903 6000 or www.theatreworks.org