Review: ‘Blood: A Comedy’ at Dreamcatcher Rep

By Rick Busciglio for Northern New Jersey Theater Examiner | March 14, 2012

This past weekend the Dreamcatcher Repertory Theatre, the always impressive professional Theatre in Residence at the Baird Center in South Orange, launched a ‘new’ farce by New Jersey playwright David Lee White, Blood: A Comedy. New, at least in North Jersey; in 2009 it was produced at the Passage Theatre in Trenton.

“Gem of a comedy”

The mystery is why did this very funny and irreverent gem of a comedy go without a stage for so long? Dreamcatcher’s artistic director, Laura Ekstrand, deserves a standing ovation for play selection, impeccable casting and, of course, directing. The casting part at all the Dreamcatcher plays is truly amazing when you realize that they are a rep company with a core of regulars in every play. In Blood: A Comedy the DRT members are Clark Carmichael, Noreen Farley, David Miceli and Jessica O’Hara-Baker. The one guest performer is F. David Halpert.

What David Lee White has provided is a fascinating, very intimate peek into the lives of two dysfunctional families that are about to be bonded by marriage. The peek is confined to one evening when the families gather for a pre-wedding dinner at the home of the bride Franny (Jessica O’Hara-Baker). She lives with her eccentric atheist mother Jacqueline (Noreen Farley) who is showing signs of the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Example: she is a college professor who has just lost her tenure for trying to teach intelligent design in a science class!

Blood “could easily make the transition to Broadway without the slightest alteration.”

This is one of those ‘Dinners from Hell’ when no one is spared and no one leaves the table unchanged. Noreen Farley, as Jacqueline, kicks off the verbal action with an explanation to the audience of her own memory problem and sets the stage for the dinner. At the table will be daughter Franny, son Alec (David Miceli), a standard issue bisexual internet porn merchant who is returning home for the first time in several years, Franny’s fiancé, Matthew (Clark Carmichael), who is a 38 year-old born-again Christian virgin and is bringing his widowed father, Noah (F.David Halpert), to meet Jacqueline.

Prior to the father’s arrival, Jacqueline, the atheist who is frightened by the memory loss, announces that it is time for them to get religion. To start this conversion she engages Franny, Alec and Matthew in a confession session. Each is to confess one past sin with the reward of a piece of cheese. What follows is a very clever verbal roller coaster ride ranging from the bride-to-be’s extensive promiscuity to the existence of God.

That is all of the plot we’ll reveal. What you need to know is that this is a remarkably talented cast, especially Noreen Farley, so perfectly cast, and Jessica O’Hara-Baker, in a hilariously funny play (especially for the open-minded), beautifully directed by Laura Ekstrand, that could easily make the transition to Broadway without the slightest alteration. This is four-star entertainment.

Read the review online at examiner.com

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