Turning a leaf

What happens when your life takes that unexpected turn—when the person with whom you’ve shared your home and soul for years leaves you alone and hopeless?

You begin chapter two, and you pray there will not be a chapter three.

This is Neil Simon’s optimistic and easier-said-than-done perspective on plunging back into the dating pool after a long-term relationship has ended. Based on his own life, Simon’s Chapter Two focuses on a widowed novelist, a divorced actress and their attempt to form something happy and new while so many stale and imposing memories threaten to undermine their efforts.

While the play, being produced by the Valhalla Players in South Lake Tahoe, is about the plausibility of finding a second soul mate (as if you were even able to find a first), it also deals with the difficulties of preventing an over-analytical mind from over thinking affairs of the heart.

The play opens as George Schneider (Jason Macy), who’s lost his beloved wife of 12 years to an illness, returns from Europe where he went to ameliorate his devastated heart and is met by his younger brother Leo (Doug Midkiff).

On stage, Macy portrays George as a restless intellectual, fumbling through papers on his desk or pacing in front of the couch he rarely sits on.

Although George temporarily swears off women, especially after disastrously dating some boneheads his brother sets him up with, he accidentally makes a phone call to Jenny Malone (Michelle Allen), who hooks George the moment she opens her mouth. A quick, bitingly witty phone conversation that ensues between George and Jenny is the first great moment in the play.

Macy and Allen are superior at conveying the awkwardness between two people who don’t want to rush into a new relationship but cannot help feeling an intellectual and emotional connection. The chemistry is some of the best I’ve seen. Their interactions are always rhythmic and they, and under the direction of Stan Bautista, deliver lines with impeccable comedic timing, so that no nuance is missed.

The two meet, and in two weeks, they are ready to get married. Or, at least they think they are. George, still deeply in love with his deceased wife, feels deeply conflicted. He says things so hurtful to Jennie that you want to jump on stage and kick some decency into him.

Allen portrays Jennie as one of the most likeable females I’ve seen on stage or in film for a long time. While the playwright crafted Jennie’s character as understanding and intelligent, Allen lends an elegance and tenderness to the role that is clearly her own. Jennie becomes the glue that holds the conflicted George together, and Allen is the glue that holds the play itself together. Allen sets the standard for the rest of the performers, and although their acting skills sometimes seem less finely tuned than hers, they’re usually successful in keeping up.

Jennie’s best friend Faye Medwick (Carlita Penaherrera) and Leo have their own romantic interlude. Their shallow interactions provide an interesting contrast to the genuine affection and friendship of George and Jennie. The energetic performance of Penaherrera as a ditsy and unstable adulteress makes her scenes with Midkiff lively and appealing.

The play is worth a trip to Tahoe’s Valhalla Boathouse Theatre. For a play that is fairly long and only has two sets and four actors, there is never a dull moment.

Chapter Two may give you pause if you’re thinking about a reason to begin a new chapter in your life. Like any though-provoking work of art, you’ll feel all the wiser for having experienced it.