Take one married woman, a sweet-talking (and ridiculously handsome) widower, an innocent miscommunication and the intrinsic giddiness of attraction, and you’ve got a delightful misadventure that’s an absolute joyride.
“Becky’s New Car” is Mountain Community Theater’s latest comedic endeavor, and the production is a ramble through heartfelt emotions that emerges from choices and their consequences.
Coming off a star turn as Florence Unger, one of the principals in Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple (Female Version),” Shireen Doyle plays Becky Foster, a woman mired in middle age, middle management and a middling marriage.
One night, an oh-so-easy-on-the-eyes grief-stricken millionaire walks through the door of the car dealership that employs Becky, and her heart accelerates in response to this stranger’s appearance. Becky and the audience are taken for a thrilling ride through a production that obliterates the fourth wall, resulting in an adventure that is well off the beaten path.
“What’s interesting about this play is it’s never been performed in the area before,” Doyle said. “In addition, it’s about a middle-aged woman, but it was written by a middle-aged man with some genuine insight into the human condition. There is so much intelligent dialogue and it’s really enjoyable.”
Doyle has about two hours of dialogue in the play, which is set in the Seattle area.
“Becky has been married to Joe for 28 years and she works as an office manager at a car dealership. Her self-worth is somewhat dissolved, and she’s become the woman who is frequently overlooked by others, so to have the dashing Walter Flood enter the dealership with the intent to purchase nine cars as gifts is something Becky has never seen,” she said.
As the transaction progresses, a verbal gaffe leads to an invitation that Becky would never consider accepting, but this good girl downshifts into a version of herself that hasn’t seen daylight in years, and the results are funny, farcical and entirely human.
“Walter’s meeting with Becky sets up the moral quandary of the play; he’s a naive, sweet character who has a lot of strong qualities in his own right,” said Dusty Harker, who plays Flood.
Although Harker hasn’t stepped foot onto the MCT stage, he and his young son were cast in “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” in Scotts Valley as the two leading male roles. From there, it was a short distance to the elder Harker landing the role of Walter Flood, thanks to the invitation of “Becky’s New Car” Director Hannah Eckstein.
“It feels natural and familiar to embody this character, moral equivalency aside,” Harker said. “He’s funny, and there’s such a humor to his naïveté that it’s fun to explore and bring those qualities to life.”
All of those witty moments and bungled communication are done without the fourth wall intact, meaning audience members can expect to verbally mingle with Doyle’s Becky as she poses questions and seeks affirmation from attendees. (The fourth wall is a conceptual barrier that separates the audience from the actors in a work of fiction, such as film, television or theater. The wall is invisible to the audience, but opaque to the actors, blocking them from the audience.)
“This is my fourth directorial effort with MCT; having lived in Los Angeles for many years, I’ve been a professional actress for a very long time, and I directed some productions in L.A. Those productions weren’t called community theater, but rather 99-Seat Theater, which allows both union and non-union members to perform in productions,” Eckstein said. “This play centers on the kind of deep awakening that some people experience. What if I had married that guy, or what if that first date had just worked out, or what if I had missed that flight? The road not taken is the metaphor for the car, and Becky’s life; I’ve had those moments in my life, and I frequently wonder what my life would be like if I had made just one different decision. We all get to experience that excitement and wonder in this production.”
Eckstein said she is naturally drawn to comedic material (all four of the plays she has directed for MCT have been comedies).
While there is stochastic comedy abound in “Becky’s New Car,” there is also the essential love of Becky’s husband, Joe Foster, played by MCT veteran Dave Halper.
“I’m the guy who is the one stable piece around which other chaos revolves. Joe is a solid guy—a good husband and a good dad—that loves Becky implicitly and doesn’t get flustered about stuff, whereas most of the other characters are running around in some kind of self-created chaos,” said Halper, whose first show with MCT was “Spamalot” in 2014.
When asked what the moral of the story is for “Becky’s New Car,” Halper replied, “I’m kind of with Homer Simpson on this one. There is no moral of the story, it’s just a bunch of stuff that happened. It’s definitely a comedic slice of life, and it all depends on how one looks at it. It can be about people’s choices, their reactions to things that happen to them and around them. It’s like life; there’s no moral to life.”
For those wondering what the road not taken looks like on stage, “Becky’s New Car” is the perfect throughway to the scenic route of life.
Performances of “Becky’s New Car” take place at Ben Lomond’s Park Hall on Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, with Sunday matinees at 2pm. A Community Night performance will be offered on Friday, May 24, at 8pm when tickets are 2 for $25. There will be a talk back with the director and cast Sunday, June 2, after the performance. Tickets are available at mctshows.org.
