REVIEW: Frothy 'Hit' delivers laughs, but is overly sweet

By ANNE MARIE WELSH - For the North County Times | Wednesday, June 11, 2008 12:18 PM PDT ∞

Lamb's Players artistic director Robert Smyth got it right when he introduced the opening night performance of Mike Buckley's new play "The Hit" as a nice piece of "lemon meringue pie." Smyth also directed this confection, Lamb's 40th world premiere, one of many written by the theater's associate artists and members of its acting ensemble.

The versatile Buckley wrote the script, designed the antiques-shop set, gathered the props, and appeared as Sam, the likably befuddled would-be lover in this energetically acted (and directed), if bland and implausible romantic comedy.

Ideally, lemon meringue pie arrives at the table light and not too sweet. Anyone who has attempted to make one from scratch, however, knows how deceptively difficult the recipe is. The crust can get soggy, the filling lumpy and the meringue too often falls flat.

Buckley gets the meringue part just right in "The Hit," whipping up jokes, sight gags and one-liners at a rapid clip with the aid of four game supporting actors. The romantic filling ---- the love-at-first sight affair of Sam and Susan (Cynthia Gerber) ---- gets thick and oversweet at times. And the foundational crust of the cartoon plot could have been a lot smoother.

Enough of the dessert metaphor, though.

Here's the pretext of "The Hit": Antiques shop owner Susan thinks she has a fatal illness and doesn't want her math whiz younger brother Steve to watch her linger and suffer. So she hires a hit man to dispatch her. That way Steve will still get the life insurance money and perhaps take his rightful place with the brains, studying at nearby Stanford University.

Sam stumbles into the shop, however, creating instant chemistry with Susan, though their attraction initially has the push-pull antagonism of a Hepburn-Tracy movie, not because of any sophistication in the writing, but due to a case of mistaken identity.

Eventually, Susan succumbs to the gosh-golly charm of this visiting travel agent and chirps such lines as "Stop being wonderful" as they fall in love. The couple's relationship takes off, despite her diagnosis.

Meanwhile, brother Steve (Chris Bresky) attempts to date the perky Samm (Season Duffy); saying more about Samm would ruin too many surprises in "The Hit." Bresky and Duffy are actually the pretty "wonderful" couple here, punning and joking with an innocence and energy that carries every one of their light-hearted, if preposterous, scenes.

The rest of the evening's froth comes from three actors: David Cochran Heath speaking mumbo-jumbo pidgin Russian as the Slavic hit man; Gail West as a nosegay of weird customers and locals; and most of all, Paul Maley as everybody else.

Maley decorates (and pads) the plot as a kind of running gag. He puts his physicality and sharp timing to good use, appearing as a silent, robotic customer, a stereotypically flouncy gay man, an EMT fireman in full regalia (to name just a few of his many impressively engineered guises). He's best in a truly funny cameo with West as a senior citizen tourist for whom squabbling with his wife is an indoor sport.

As Susan, Cynthia Gerber is lively and often appealing, as is the handsome Buckley. But there's little the gifted Gerber can do when the dialogue reverts to 1950s TV-style banter and turns her into a sweetly cheerful cheerleader for Sam, who's still not over the death of his wife.

Buckley's junk- and antique-filled set provides plenty to look at as the production unfolds. The opening-night audience seemed to gobble up this generic summer dessert, which will be followed by more white, light fare, the Lamb's-generated "Boomers" opening downtown when Lamb's Players takes over the management of the Horton Grand Theatre next month.

"The Hit"

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays; 4 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays; through July 13

Where: Lamb's Players Theatre, 1142 Orange Ave., Coronado

Tickets: $26-$56

Phone: (619) 437-0600

Web: www.lambsplayers.org

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