SOME CANDY
The members of Cardiff Giant don’t try to be clever. They are clever. And smart. And on the whole, remarkably skilled actors. The humor in their work is drawn from the nearly impossible situations in which the highly polarized characters suddenly find themselves. Each performer has to think like an actor as well as a playwright–knowing when to lead, when to follow, and when to make a timely exit. Cardiff Giant sets itself a difficult agenda in Some Candy, so it’s not a laugh riot–but improv needn’t be funny to be good. Watching these performers work is wholly captivating, and when the laughs do come, they’re from the gut.
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By and large, all of Cardiff Giant’s characters teeter on the brink of mania. From Laura T. Fisher’s vicious born-again Christian who constantly spits on others to Mark Ray Hollmann’s anything-but-coherent spiritualist who always keeps his index fingers pointing up, the characters seem bent on maintaining inner stability when explosions seem imminent. The actors do their best to appear normal–which shows that they have genuine sympathy for their characters–and thereby make themselves all the more charmingly bizarre. John Hildreth is the only actor who pushes his character a bit too far, making his deranged and howling gypsy Chester difficult to listen to.
