Love Seat, Sulacco Productions, at the Playground. There are some fleeting moments of fine comedy in Matt Larsen’s Love Seat, but they can’t compensate for this underdeveloped play’s overall predictability. Kit is frustrated by her unemployed, childish boyfriend, Todd, so she invites her angry lesbian sister, Gloria, to visit. Meanwhile Todd has forgotten to mention that he’s agreed to let his blowhard buddy, Carey, crash on the couple’s love seat. Larsen follows these characters as they fall in and out of love in various combinations; even the bitter Gloria has a brief, happy fling with Carey before returning to her radical roots.
Not only are the pairings unsurprising, they’re also uninteresting due to the lack of character development or motivation. These four travel through the script’s many crises–Todd’s departure, Kit’s pregnancy scare, Carey becoming a fugitive from the law–without ever reacting. Anything that has the potential to give the show dramatic life is merely mentioned, then promptly forgotten or dealt with in a few lines. Why should we care what happens to this foursome when the playwright doesn’t?
Larsen’s staging is dull or distracting (as when a couple has sex while other characters deliver what might have been telling monologues), and the cast–with the exception of Christopher Carpenter as Carey–is unable to develop consistently credible characters.