You will love Opal

by Meghan D'Souza

Old Creamery - Everybody Loves Opal delivered exactly what it promised: laughter provided by Old Creamery regular Marquetta Senters as Opal Kronkie. Senters molded right into this role as a fun-loving, affectionate, positive woman who lit up the room the moment she shuffled onto the stage that had been transformed into Opal's home full of junk that she collects. You know, because if you keep it long enough, you never know when something might come back in style. With a heart as big as Opal's, it's no wonder she welcomes three perfect strangers to rent her second floor shortly upon meeting them. She only sees the good in people.

Only these people, Brad (Andy Brown), Sol (Jason Grubbe), and Gloria (Lisa Margolin), are not who she thinks they are at all. These three friends are con artists who want to eliminate Opal. When she's gone, the insurance money is theirs. But with all of the plotting and attempts they make, their worlds are turned around. The comedy comes in all that goes wrong and in the end we are treated to a heartfelt lesson about faith and true friendship.

Brown, Grubbe and Margolin did a fantastic job as a trio. They bounced off each other, making it believable that they've been friends long before Opal came into their lives. Margolin's body language and voice were highly effective to convey the humor throughout the play. She also transitioned from a criminal into a person with a good conscience and made that a smooth ride for those of us in the audience.

Brown handled difficult scenes well. His character was drunk in one scene and instead of going over-the-top, which could have been easy, he was able to remain believable. However, his character may have worked a little bit better with a different way of speaking. All of the other characters had southern accents while Brad over enunciated his words. This may have been a way to show that he was once a professor, because the script called for Brown to use an unnecessarily large vocabulary and use quotes that left the other characters dumbfounded. If he didn't use precise diction and didn't have a southern accent, then we may have been left wondering why he didn't use more in his speech to show that he was a professor.

I don't like to leave small roles out. Those take a lot of hard work, and the audience was left laughing at the scene involving Tom Milligan as a doctor and Senters. Their dialogue was so quick and very funny, I'm amazed that they didn't mess up their lines or crack a smile. Milligan asked Senters a series of questions that she either quickly answered or chose to go on a tangent about her cat, forcing Milligan to push for an answer. That was, by far, my favorite scene of the whole play. The way these two actors worked together was incredible.

If there was one thing that I would change about the play to improve it just a bit, it would be a combination of the costumes and the items chosen to be on the set. While the set, itself, was very creative with the skeleton of a house packed with all sorts of junk in every nook and cranny available, some of the junk chosen threw me off when I began to wonder what time period we were in. I suspected it was probably the 1920's because of the slang used, like "Cripes!" and because the rent was $10 per month. But the set had a red and chrome kitchen table that is associated with the 1950s, a radio that I had in the 1980s, and a television that wouldn't have existed until the 1990s. Then again, Opal stayed warm with a radiator, cooked with a small gas stove, and used a basin for her water.

I looked to the costumes to try to figure out what era we were in, but everyone was wearing something different. Grubbe's fedora and suits gave a 1920's flare, but Brown was often in short sleeved button-down shirts or a sweater vest and slacks. Margolin's skirts were too short to suggest it was before the 1950s, but as nice as her outfits were, they did not have a specific time period tied to them. Senters wore slacks and different tops throughout the show. Again, the slacks suggest it was after the 1950s, but there wasn't anything specific about the outfits to tell the audience what year it was.

With rent at $10 and the slang the characters were using, a sense of continuity brought through with the set and costumes would have added a little extra bonus to the play. However, this didn't bring the play down. Actors with good comedic timing and a good bond with each other that translated on stage is what made this play. The title doesn't lie. I really do love Opal.