RMT's HOUSE

If there's anything you need to take away from this post it's this: Donnie Smith is awesome.

I was first introduced to his work through RMT's Small Engine Repair, produced by Corryn Cummins - an amazing actress and one of the people who introduced us to RMT to begin with. Small Engine Repair was so good, that it went on to win a plethora of awards, and Donnie's portrayal of Swaino was so good in it, that I've called him "Donnie Swaino" in my head for a long time. I still expect him to whip out some vanilla-scented moisturizer to rub it on his scalp.

Since, though, I hadn't seen Donnie in anything else. Instead, I've had fantastic conversations with him in his smoking spot right outside RMT's Theatre Theater, next to the homeless guy who struts and frets in a soliloquy for himself. I've learned about Donnie's interests, his career, and we've engaged in conversations about theatre marketing, promotion, and fundraising.

So HOUSE, brought to you by RMT's Off the Clock late night series, is the second time I've actually seen Donnie on the stage, and he is brilliant, playing a disturbed, conflicted man. This one-man, one-act show is a confession of sorts, in which Victor gets to tell us (literally, because he knows we're there; there is no fourth wall) what he thinks of his therapy group, his wife, his coworkers, his boss, his family, and even himself. He renders the performance with so much energy, anger, strength, aggression, and desperation tjat you'd imagine Victor to be a strong, confident man, when he is really a meak man, who's fallen prey to his destiny. A man who wants to break from the shadows, but is invisible and allows everyone in his life to walk all over him as he struggles to find the balance between fantasty and reality.

Victor is a shaken bottle, ready to pop the cork.

RMT's Where the Great Ones Run

Don Smith said it best: RMT's Where the Great Ones Run is like a country song.
It actually does contain a country song, which is sweet and perfectly timed, but the whole play feels like a country song: substance abuse, struggling with inner demons, abandoned or neglected families, women who love men that don't deserve it, and men who are begrudgingly beguiling.

Add in the Bible Belt mindset of smalltown folk, and you've got yourself a delightful portrayal of reality. So real that you feel you're in the diner where it takes place, sitting at a faraway table.

The story is predictable - which is actually fitting because that's part of the point. It not really about the plot, but about everyday interactions and relationships and finding the blissful moments within family dysfunction.

Save for one actress's performance, the acting is wonderful and believable, with the right amount of comic relief moments. The acting in general is so good that you don't realize how many people are in the cast until the final bow. Why do I say that? Because we're in smalltown Americana, and the performances of most of the cast - the diner's patrons - have to be equally small, mundane, simple. It's difficult to believe that Jeff Kober is not actually Sonny Burl because the part fits him like a glove.