Civic cast triumphs in 'Lucky Spot'

By CHRISTOPHER POTTER

NEWS ARTS WRITER

Hosannas to director Wendy Wright’s Ann Arbor Civic Theatre production of Beth Henley’s “The Lucky Spot,” which lets one bask in the dank yet oddly sweet confines of a Louisiana mansion-tumed-taxi-dance-hall on Christmas Eve 1934.

Suave, inane dreamer Reed Hooker - who won the house plus a 15-year-old prostitute in a New Orleans poker game - believes his seedy enterprise is “bound for glory.” No matter that all but one of his taxi-dance girls have caught the train out of rural Pigeon, La., and no matter that the mansion’s about to be seized for unpaid debts.

One might assume a play about impractical Reed (played by Rob Roy), eight-months-pregnant gambling “prize” Cassidy Smith (Amelia Martin), a hired flunky named Turnip (Aaron Rabb), an aging taxi dancer named Lacey (Elise Stempky), and a tramp named Sam (Larry Rusinsky) must be a sentimental wallow in lovable losers. Not so, despite Henleyisms of dark humor (Young Cassidy has six toes on one foot) and the fact that yes, these people are lovable - but in all the right ways.

The show is an actors’ triumph: As wannabe-entrepreneur Hooker, the handsome Roy looks and sounds like a fired game-show host (especially in his Act II tuxedo), his grandiose proclamations never hiding his character’s look of haggard insecurity. As closet-brainy Turnip, Rabb emphasizes his character’s affinity for making others feel good - particularly weary Lacey, bravely played by Stempky as a damsel who must depend on the kindness of strangers.

Kevin Branshaw is the personification of courtly heartlessness as aristocratic home-grabber Whitt Carmichael. The angel-faced Martin nearly steals the show as Cassidy, a soiled, pregnant Candide off whom life’s arrows bounce as though they had rubber tips. Rusinsky’s grubby Sam keeps popping up full of holiday cheer (and booze) just when everyone’s forgotten about him.

Lovable types? Yes, but because they so desperately need love, not because Henley wanted to pen a cute Southern-Gothic sitcom. The loaded gun - literally - in this mix is Hooker’s estranged wife Sue Jack (Emily Phenix in a great performance), just out of prison and whose trademark toughness has crumpled. The pent-up emotion between Hooker and Sue Jack boils over again and again and still again, fueled by Phenix’s portrait of pain that cynicism can no longer dilute.

“The Lucky Spot” isn’t about whether The Lucky Spot will survive: It’s about whether Henley’s people - people worth caring about - will survive their shared Depression-era deprivation. Wright, a masterful director, pipes in wicked New Orleans jazz of long ago, softening the play’s often sad and violent proceedings. By show’s end Henley’s hard-knock folks seem imbued with a state of grace as sweet a mint julep.

"The Lucky Spot" runs tonight through Sunday and March 21 - 24 at Ann Arbor Civic Theatre, 408 W. Washington St. Curtain is 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $16 general, $14 students/seniors. For reservations call (734) 971 - 2228.