Southern Comforts is delightful

by Andrew R. Juhl

ITAC - Southern Comforts is a delightful, safe, and entirely predictable piece of theatre leading this season for the Iowa Theatre Artists Company.

If you’ve never been to see a show in the comfortable, intimate 117-seat venue that houses the ITAC, this production would be a great way to cut your teeth. This reviewer, for one, plans to see at least one additional show there this year, if not two or three.

One of my biggest peeves when watching a play is when I’m very aware that I’m watching a play, but ITAC’s competent, professional actors and crew made me forget that fact several times throughout the show. Instead of liking or not liking an actor or performance, I found myself liking or not liking particular characters and their situations; I actually felt a connection, at times, to the make-believe world constructed by this troupe of entertainers, evoking a few emotions that assiduously strayed away from my default temperament of limitless snark.

Meg Merckens and Robert Gardner play ‘Amanda Cross’ and ‘Gus Klingman’, two widowed retirees with too much time and too much loneliness on their hands. Gardner’s Gus is an implacably obstinate man who likes things a certain way and who never strays far from his home when he can avoid it, and Merckens’ Amanda is the fiery, adventurous southern belle who somehow catches is eye and grabs his heart. The two shouldn’t work, but they do, and the audience never really suspects that they won’t end up together.

Meg Merckens does a fine job inhabiting the role of Amanda Cross. Her accent kept reminding me of Rue McClanahan’s ‘Blanche Devereaux.’ She had fine comedic timing and worked the entire stage with admirable luster, using every piece of scenery and every backdrop as a real person would. A set it not a museum, and she doesn’t treat it as one. More as a complaint with the script than with Merckens, however, I tired quickly of her shrill, exasperated tone. The play is full of arguments between these two characters, and as such, requires her animated delivery, but by the end of the evening I was as afraid for Merckens’ vocal chords as I was my own eardrums.

Robert Gardner’s portrayal of Gus, in my opinion, outshines Merckens’ Amanda. As an old stonemason, he's built a metaphorical wall around his house and his life to keeps others at bay. He doesn’t like change, he doesn’t like new things, and he doesn’t seem to like other people in general. It is his obtuse deliberateness that is the driving force behind nearly every argument in the show, and his resistance to the obvious that spurs the climatic events in the second act. He is, to be blunt, an unlikable character. Or at least, he should be. But Gardner’s unerring delivery and commitment to the character’s almost childlike sense of naiveté at trying to understand the mind of a woman rings true with the audience. It was his lines I laughed at, his reactions that made me smile and think, and his compromises that made me want to call some loved ones after the show to let them know how much I care.

Act I begins a little slow, but reaches a fun and funny conclusion at its third scene. The tone darkens substantially in Act II as the two characters are forced into larger and more important confrontations, and the play ends on a poignant—if somewhat morbid—note. There are two acts, six scenes, and an intermission, and it’s all wrapped up in a little under two hours, which was just the right amount of time for a piece like this. Any longer, and I would have been checking my watch; any shorter, and I would have felt cheated.

I would be remiss without also pointing out the expertly-made set. The set in this production played a big part in maintaining believability in and identification with the characters. It reflected amazing craftsmanship and attention to detail, right down the runners on the hardwood staircase that the real-life version of Gus would undoubtedly have insisted upon.

This play about love and the end of life will make you laugh, think, and feel. So I say unto you, loyal readers of the Iowa Theatre Blog: go forth and give this still fledgling local company a look. And bring a friend.


Andrew R. Juhl is an area author and director. He has previously worked with the City Circle Acting Company of Coralville and Rage Theatrics.