Stuck in the past — literally

Sunday, July 10th, 2011 - 2:22 pm - Real Estate Agent

‘Stuff’ is now showing in Boca Raton. (File / July 12, 2011)

It’s not change that causes stress, it’s resistance to change. That could be the take-away from “Stuff,” a new seriocomedy getting a world premiere at the Caldwell Theatre Company in .

Time is a shifting, layered thing in the “dramedy” written by South Florida playwright Michael McKeever. It seems to be flying by the gentrified Collyer family even as they do their level best to freeze it on the spot, forever savoring moments already fading. Based on a true story tabloid fodder, really the Collyer Mansion was the first big hoarder headline, filled to the crumbling ceiling with tons and tons of junk and debris. The discovery of the corpses of the reclusive Collyer brothers, Homer and Langley, in 1947 was a sensation never fully explained. McKeever opens his play in 1929 where the seeds of isolation are already sprouting in the palatial home on Fifth Avenue, on the edge of Harlem. There, the Collyer Brothers live with their elegant mother, Susie Gage Frost Collyer (played with patrician panache by Angie Radosh, who owns it totally), who is determined in her iron-fists-sheathed-in-velvet-gloves way to stave off modernity. She traps her sons into a paradox: Fulfill your potential, but don’t do anything as plebian as pursue a career as a concert pianist or invest in real estate. So Homer (played by McKeever) and Langley (Nicholas Richberg, a natural aristocrat) divert their considerable intellectual energies into sibling sniping and collecting, oblivious to the changes all around them in Harlem. The family is slack-jawed that black law clerk Thomas Bevins (Marckenson Charles, who doubles as home invader Charlie Smith in the second act) lives on Astor Row. Just outside of their sumptuous sitting room a magnificently detailed set by Tim Bennett time is speeding up and Harlem is finding a new identity. But the Collyers have put the brakes on, clinging to their old identity as a family arriving to these shores just after the Mayflower. When the curtain rises on the second act, the audience can’t contain a gasp as the sitting room is almost unrecognizable, piled high with newspapers, pianos, furniture and rubbish. It is 18 years later, post World War II, and Homer is crippled and blind (McKeever delivers here more assuredly than in the first act, capturing the degredation and decay). Langley has booby-trapped their home in a desperate effort to keep the outside world at bay, a futile act that gives “Stuff” its final, bitter bite. Directed with some delicacy by Clive Cholerton, McKeever’s script is equal parts drawing room comedy and dark historical parable. The flow is natural, so much so that when the last word which is “now” is uttered, its impact hits you right in the gut. The Collyers avoided “now” with Chekhovian effort and cost. But here “now” is, nontheless. If you go “Stuff” is performed Wednesday-Saturday through July 31 at the Caldwell Theatre Company, 7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton. Tickets: $38-$50 (students $10). Info: caldwelltheatre.com, 877-245-7432.

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