A delight in attending semi-professional theaters is the chance to see plays that aren’t likely to make it even to off-off-Broadway but are more entertaining than the detritus that covers the New York stage. Last night, in Olympia, Washington, I took in a performance of Mating Dance of the Werewolf, written by one of the world’s innumerable Mark Steins (not Mark Steyn) and presented by Harlequin Productions, which I like despite the fact that it was a recipient of “stimulus” money.
The play had its first run four years ago in Winnipeg and Los Angeles. Hopes for a New York production never went anywhere, so the playwright began shopping it around and grabbed the attention of Harlequin’s producer-in-chief, Scot Whitney, with the opening line, “Have they found Allen’s head yet?” What follows is an urban fantasy with undertones of comedy and horror. Ken, a policeman in Duluth, Minnesota, falls for a girl with rather strange habits, like sniffing new acquaintances. Soon-to-be-headless Allen, his former partner and husband of his ex-fiancée, finds her attractive, too, and wants to get to the bottom of her obscure past. Pam, the ex-fiancée, is tired of her marriage. A police lieutenant, Ken’s and Allen’s superior, perhaps Pam’s lover, completes the cast.
Novel touches are a female werewolf and consideration of the romantic complications that membership in two species might entail. Touches that probably make the work unplayable in the Big Apple are cigarette smoking on stage and the treatment of a certain one of Allen’s less conventional character traits – no need to go into what it is – as a problem and flaw rather than a liberating virtue. The ending has a degree of ambivalence – did things really happen as Ken thinks they did? – that I thought was fine and my companion didn’t.
The production that I saw had a couple of faults that will probably shake out as the run progresses: A few cues were missed, one very conspicuously, and the actors didn’t always project as well as those of us with failing hearing would like. On the positive side, Helen Harvester, who played the werewolf girl, was more than impressive. She seems to specialize in “crazies”: “the homicidal Irene St Claire in The Crucifer of Blood with CenterStage, schizophrenic Genny in tempOdyssey with Theater Schmeater and skilled assassin Christine in the short film The Queen of Wands”. She told an interviewer that she prepared for the performance by watching YouTube videos of wolves. She learned well.
Mating Dance of the Werewolf runs on Thursdays through Sundays until September 12th. For those who live within driving distance of Olympia, it would definitely not be a waste of money.
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