Some cheap tricks for getting an audience’s attention: Have a phone ring onstage. The sound of a ringing telephone seems to stimulate the release of adrenaline, causing anxiety and tension. Depict sexual activity of any sort, or show a little nudity. This stimulates other hormones that contribute to full alertness. Place a psychopath in a locked room with a few defenseless people. The prospect of murder or mayhem awakens the survival instinct, which supersedes all others.
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The phone does not ring in When You Comin Back, Red Ryder? The cord is cut early in the play. But Mark Medoff, the author of this trite little thriller, uses the other tricks shamelessly. A waitress at a dingy diner in a sleepy little New Mexican town is held hostage, along with three customers and the night cook, by a deranged punk armed with a revolver and his sarcastic wit. The punk eventually shoots one of them and then spends much of the second act forcing sex on the two women. As an added attraction he pulls the sweater of one of them up over her head, exposing her torso, and threatens to strip her.
There’s actually quite a bit going on among the characters in this sleepy scene, but you must divine that from the dialogue alone–the performances are so shallow they never even hint at anything beneath the surface. Angel (Margaret MacLeod) apparently has a crush on Stephen (Matthew Wuertz), who wants nothing more out of life than a red Corvette and an apartment of his own–in another town. Lyle (Reid Ostrowski), who walks with a limp because of a stroke, is too shy to reveal his affection for Angel, who sometimes goes over to his place to watch TV with him. The husband (Rick O’Connell) is a pompous oaf whose manhood is being questioned by his smart, independent wife (Diane Ponti Wright) who seems far more attached to her $11,000 violin than she is to him.
But the sex and violence pull the audience along. The staging may be careless, but who’s going to notice when there are gunshots and the threat of rape? Like so many TV shows, Red Ryder reaches out to the hormones, not to the head. Especially this production.
