Review: Shooting Star at Dreamcatcher Repertory Theatre

By Rick Busciglio for Northern New Jersey Theater Examiner | January 15, 2012

“Ensemble theatre with humor and heart” now at the critically acclaimed Dreamcatcher Repertory Theatre in South Orange. That’s what you will find on stage in a wonderful, sensitive two-character romantic comedy... Shooting Star at the cozy black box theater at the Baird Center.

“Wonderful, sensitive… romantic comedy”

Have you ever wondered what you would say if you were to meet a first love many years after you went your separate ways? Playwright Steven Dietz takes us to that place and situation in a most authentic manner in his bittersweet play. The entire play is set in a mid-America airport lounge during a major winter blizzard that has caused, of course, utter havoc with flight schedules. Elena Carson, played with perfection by Dreamcatcher’s artistic director, Laura Ekstrand, is a 40-something hippie holdout from Austin who spots her ‘one and only true love’ from her college years among the fellow stranded travelers. If this were a film, Judy Garland would be singing Harold Arlen’s classic song of lost love “The Man That Got Away” in the background.

“Elena Carson, played with perfection by Dreamcatcher’s artistic director, Laura Ekstrand”

The man, Reed McAllister, is played with equal perfection by Dreamcatcher Rep member Harry Patrick Christian. McAllister is no longer a save-the-world counter-culture student of the 1970s, but a conservative mid-level businessman suffering the pressures of modern life, in this case, a pre-teen age daughter who is acting like a man’s pre-teen age daughter, (all men will understand this difficult time when a father is viewed as the least cool man on the planet), a wife of little or no loyalty, an employer who wants business results or else… and a romantic curiosity about his early love.

The title comes from Bob Dylan’s song, Shooting Star.

Does this accidental encounter have life-altering consequences for them? Will they rekindle their relationship? All the answers await at the Baird Center Theater.

A word about Laura Ekstrand and Harry Patrick Christian: Just watching these two on stage together—regardless of the material—is a delight in itself; and what a bonus to have them together in this fine play.

Read the review online at Northern New Jersey Theater Examiner

Read another review

BACK to “Shooting Star”