30 MINUTES OF TRUE FIDELITY
at Sheffield’s School Street Cafe
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Angelich is a stand-up comedian, and the experience shows in her dialogue. It’s not that she writes jokes. In fact, she seems to steer clear of them, which was a terrific idea. But Angelich has the comedian’s rhythm–setup, payoff, build, turn away, return–and it turns out to be good for drama, too. You’re aware as the story unfolds of a tough intelligence picking away at the lines, looking for an opening, looking for a way to turn things around and open up new meanings.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean the dialogue all works. True Fidelity is populated with inarticulate people, inarticulate not because they’re stupid but because they’re controlled. Even when they bare their souls (which they do with distressing frequency) they’re holding back, throwing up a smoke screen of language–bland, middle-class language. You hear echoes of pop-psych in the ladies’ speech, and good high school educations, and talk shows. What you don’t hear is the ring of spontaneity and truth.
That’s partly an actor’s job, of course, and one member of the cast did an impressive job of it even with a less-than-perfect script. Kent Reed as Colonel Waller has a fine scene where Jacki interrogates him about his past. He describes his father’s pointless wartime death in classic military understatement. The language is dead, affectless, but Waller finds life and drama in it. From moment to moment we can watch him using his words differently–now hiding behind them, now revealing himself (but as neutrally as possible in order not to beg for the sympathy he may or may not want), now accepting the lifeless sound of his own words as a just portrayal of the events he’s describing. It’s a fine piece of acting, Reed’s first in town, and it suggests the script may be better than it looks.
Shelley Fichtel has talent. Her jokes are often funny, and there’s a nice, likable tone to Pastabilities. But she doesn’t seem particularly interested in her characters, or what they do. And the show as produced bears an unfortunate resemblance to a rather conspicuous TV sitcom. (The new waitress is blond, college-educated, and a stiff. She has eyes–sometimes–for the bartender, who’s tall and dark with a lot of stiff hair and is beneath her socially. The old waitress has curly hair and a mouth . . .)
