5th Wall Productions will close out its comeback season with its first workshop production since 2021, FINDING NEIL PATRICK HARRIS, a hilarious new comedy by acclaimed Buffalo NY writer Donna Hoke.
Performances will be hosted by Threshold Repertory Theatre in downtown Charleston.
About the play:
When frenemy nail techs Cha-Cha and Katie are privileged to hear a favorite customer's bizarre dying wish, they set off to make it come true. In their quest to find Neil Patrick Harris, they discover that what they've been searching for has been right in front of them.
The play is directed by local actor and educator, Maddie Latham, and stars Merry Ard as KATIE, Rhonda WIndberg as CHA-CHA, and features Nick Orletsky as four very different characters: LUCIO, LUCY, LUCAS, and LUCKY.
Check out this patron review:
The show was beautifully constructed, the passage of time representing the strange way time seems to move in grief; moments seem endless, but the days fly by. The structure allows the questions posed by the playwright, both spoken and unspoken, to breathe, alternating between vignettes of disagreement and soliloquy that allow ample exploration of character. An ever present question of passion and purpose chases the characters, in the form of a face that just keeps reappearing across the journey, a specter that pushes them forward in unexpected ways. The conversation of humor, of what makes a person funny, turns into a discussion of the unhealthy manner that comedy might be used as a mechanism to obscure and hide away from reality, how that affects those we love. As a breath of fresh air, the characters explore a variety of conventional and unconventional familial and platonic relationships; they don't solve the problems that exist, but they reflect on the meaning of these connections, most of the time letting their importance remain unspoken, but understood nonetheless.
The actors fully inhabit their roles; the two nail techs, Cha Cha and Katie, are very real and layered, but the standout is Lucio/Lucy/Lucas/Lucky; the actor manages to thoroughly balance four distinct personas, while also bringing a throughline to each scene, that aforementioned question of purpose and direction. The chemistry between the three is delightfully awkward at times, leading to some standout moments of physical comedy. The staging capitalizes on these awkward encounters, and somehow makes the stage seem small and cramped at times, and sparse and wide at others.
A workshop production is always going to face its quirks, and any good director can take these and make them work- in this case, they certainly did. Any awkwardness or trepidation translated into intention on the stage, any trips or hiccups became charming little quirks that simply made the characters more endearing. The show should appeal to a wide audience- but for those who have recently lost a loved one, it may provide just a little needed joy, and a moment of catharsis and closure.
-Savannah Cash