Crisp Comic Characterizations and savvy staging helped it soar.

Robert's Reviews - May 2, 2007

"Soccer Moms" and "A Little Something for the Ducks" Review from Robert's Reviews

Crisp comic characterizations and savvy staging helped the Cary Players' production of "A Little Something for the Ducks" by Jean Lenox Toddie and "Soccer Moms" by Kathleen Clark soar. Performed April 20-22, 27, and 28 at the Holly Springs Cultural Center, under the direction of Nancy Rich, this terrific twin bill may well be the best Cary Players presentation yet.

The show opened with "A Little Something for the Ducks," which is a bittersweet comic interlude in which two lonely Golden Agers fortuitously meet beside a pond in a big-city park. Seventy-nine-year-old Samuel (Jerry Zieman) scrounges bread scraps from his favorite restaurant to feed the pond's resident flock of ducks. Sixty-eight-year-old Irma (Joyce Weiser) is nonplussed by the fact that Samuel is feeding the ducks in open defiance of a great big sign commanding park users NOT to feed the ducks. So, the widower and the widow start their acquaintance at odds with each other; but they gradually become friends, and Irma even agrees to feed the ducks in Samuel's absence.

Thanks to compelling characterizations by Jerry Zieman and Joyce Weiser, "A Little Something for the Ducks" both tickles the funny bone and brings a lump to the throat. It is a charming curtain-raiser.

The first act of "Soccer Moms" closed the first half of the program by introducing three wonderful women -- Jenny Anglum as Alison, Kacey Reynolds as Lynn, and Tracey Phillips as Nancy -- who have each sacrificed their career ambitions to become the best wife and mother they can be. (The second act of "Soccer Moms" concluded the show.)

Brought together by a coed parent-child soccer game in which their cocky eight-year-olds are showing no mercy to their huffing-and-puffing, hopelessly out-of-shape moms and dads, Alison, Lynn, and Nancy find that their latent competitiveness rears its ugly head. Do they really want to outscore their progeny? Heck, yeah!

Lynn and Nancy are rapidly losing their battle with gravity, and only Alison retains a remnant of her girlish figure. Overweight and loaded down with instructional aids, Lynn is a dedicated volunteer at their children's school and a stalwart of the PTA; and Kacey Reynolds rolls up her sleeves and does the yeoman's work as Lynn. Tracey Phillips plays Nancy, a model-turned-photographer, with great conviction; and Jenny Anglum makes Alison a natural athlete and a real ball of fire stuck in a boring marriage and secretly considering an affair with a teacher.

Director Nancy Rich stages "A Little Something for the Ducks" and "Soccer Moms" with exceptional empathy and imagination, even choreographing the scene changes to keep the action going. Clever little touches, such as showing the "Soccer Moms" running in slow motion to the theme from CHARIOTS OF FIRE, made this double bill a true delight.

http://www.cvnc.org/ - Classical Voice of North Carolina for this review and many others.