By Kelly Oristano
We’re actors. We’re the opposite of people! Think in your head, now, think of the most private, secret, intimate thing you have ever done secure in the knowledge of its privacy. Are you thinking of it? Well, I saw you do it! — The Player, Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
Sarah Ruhl’s Stage Kiss, running now at The Very Little Theatre and directed by Maggie Hadley, is a funny, thoughtful, energetic exploration of the complicated contours and blurred boundaries of stage intimacy and real intimacy. Invoking the well-worn front stage/backstage trope, we see actors, directors, and the real people who orbit them, as onstage intimacy sometimes blends and other times starkly contrasts with the reality of actors’ and peoples’ lives.
Jocelyn Kerr stars as the character “She,” a working actor, though even working actors are always looking for work. We see She in auditions and rehearsals for a 1930s drawing room play (fictional, created by Ruhl for Stage Kiss,) in which She must intimately romance “He” (Mark Cunha-Rigby) an actor with whom we soon learn She has a past. A not terribly nice past.
So now She has to reckon with, and this is a non-exhaustive list: a mediocre distracted director who has no interest in coordinating the stage intimacy; an absent but jealous husband and a deservedly angry daughte; a present but deeply discomfiting former boyfriend/scene partner; and a play in which no one involved seems to have any faith.
We’ll see She and others in rehearsal and then performance, and an Act I coda that details the fallout of their run. When we return from intermission, She and He have found themselves opposite each other in a very different play.
Their Director (Clancy Miller) from the Act I play has picked up on She and He’s bristling energy and has the “brilliant” idea to harness it for his self-penned gritty ’70s play about an IRA thug and a Brooklyn prostitute. (Your guess is literally as good as mine. This confluence is never explained.) She is as aghast at this casting as are we the audience, but She also needs to work. We’ll see rehearsal and performance and post-performance coda of this show, too.
Ruhl is a brilliant writer, one of the best working today, and Stage Kiss is a very special, heartfelt piece for her. Sometimes “backstage” shows engage theater people more than regular patrons, but Ruhl knows how to get this story off the stage and into our hearts and minds. Although it is great fun, the show is written with careful intention around She to dramatically highlight all the catch-22s and Hobson’s choices in the life of even the quite successful woman actor. She’s misery becomes our misery and her resolution our resolution.
VLT’s production is impressive. The richness of Ruhl’s work comes through the space nicely, and Hadley has encouraged her ensemble to both master the material and stay in the present moment. It’s an unreservedly enjoyable evening of theater about theater.
The ensemble are memorably strong throughout. Chris Bucklew, Hillary Ferguson and Lauren Carter bring professionalism and humor to multiple characters. Thomas Weaver is tender and funny as She’s “normie” husband. Avery Eberardo is multifacetedly funny as the Director’s best friend who ends up taking misfit roles in all the plays. Clancy Miller and Mark Cunha-Rigby both understood the assignment as She’s dual antagonists. They’re frustratingly funny, or are they funnily frustrating?
At the head of this Honors Class, Jocelyn Kerr’s star turn as She is one of the finest lead performances at VLT in recent memory. It’s a professional but personal, deeply smart and funny portrayal that, with the greatest of respect to our community, seemed to be the product of a bigger, more competitive acting market. Kerr, Hadley, and Ruhl have joined forces here to realize something special.
Another star of the evening is Juliane Bodner’s marvelous set. It comprises two full theatrical sets (a ’30s-era drawing room and a ’70s tenement apartment) and two different and distinct backstage areas in the two different “theaters.” Marleena Pearson’s set crew could be seen accomplishing near-miraculous set changes during 30 or so seconds of interstitial pop or jazz.
For Hadley’s spirited direction, Ruhl’s brilliant and funny script and its insightful exploration of intimacy, Kerr’s gift to us of a character, and the newly expanded VLT shop’s set-making magic, run don’t walk to Stage Kiss.
Editor’s Note: Stage Kiss continues at The Very Little Theatre at 2350 Hilyard St. in Eugene through June 29, 2025. Tickets are available online at thevlt.com or through the box office at 541-344-7751.
