SMALL DOMESTIC ACTS
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This bittersweet comedy concerns two lower-middle-class couples–one straight, the other lesbian–whose lives are turned inside out when their friendships turn more serious. Lipkin minimizes the melodramatic potential of her story by giving as much weight to the friendship between machinist Frank and his lesbian work buddy Frankie as she does to the unfolding love affair between Straight Sheila and Lesbian Sheila (as Lipkin names them in the program).
In fact, by the end of the play I found myself caring much more about Frank and Frankie, not just because they’re the jilted lovers, but because the Sheila-Sheila affair clearly screwed up what had been a wonderful friendship between the isolated and lonely Frank and Frankie.
My only complaint is that Deborah Leydig’s Straight Sheila is too heartless in some of the later scenes. Of course, after the jilted Frank and Frankie win the audience’s sympathy you’d have to be Saint Francis of Assisi not to seem heartless. Still, Leydig’s Sheila is so much less likable than any other character that it unbalances Lipkin’s otherwise even-keeled work.
