Williamston Theater: Two Actors, Lots of Laughs

Williamston Theatre knows how to end their season right.  With a flat-out funny, goofy play whose script keeps throwing curve balls to the audience to keep them laughing and off kilter.

The play is Popcorn Falls by James Hindman which enjoyed a short run off-Broadway in 2018. 

The small town of Popcorn Falls has a big problem.  The beautiful falls which pulled in a huge tourist trade, dried up years ago.  Now the town is fighting bankruptcy.  

The mayor (everyone’s favorite funnyman, Ara Gribble) is preparing a speech to raise funds for the downtrodden town, which is soon to be razed to become a sewage plant.  With him is the city hall’s custodian, Joe (Patrick Loos) who is worried he’ll be out of a job when that happens.

These two guys, partners in laughs, also appeared together in Williamston’s Christmas hit, Hunting Shack Christmas.

Cutting to the chase, Mr. Trundle the Mayor finds that creating a small theater company and producing an original play will give the town what it needs. Obviously, the whole thing must be done with upmost speed.

The key to the success of this play, superbly directed by first time Williamston director Dave Davies, is the supersonic speed of the action enhanced by two intense actors.

We’ve seen many plays that are based on a few actors playing many characters.  But not with the ingenuity presented here.

The Mayor wears a business-type outfit with a vest, and Joe is in overalls. Despite the two actors playing 20 characters, they never change their costumes, except for one or two small alterations.

Joe cracks the audience up with his rendition of an old spinster lady holding her cat that she adores. Joe takes a mop head and roles it up to look like a cat and provides the cat noises. All the sound effects are done by the actors 

Another time, he takes a piece of patriotic bunting, wraps it around his waist and it’s a skirt, and the custodian with his overalls has just become a comely woman barkeep.

Don’t worry about getting the many scenes mixed up.  The two actors have a blackboard set up and they simply write the places like “Main Street” and “Sudsy Mug (the bar)” to guide you along.

Although both actors play off each other with the perfect timing of a basketball team, Loos has the most characters to portray and soon the entire play becomes his.

Popcorn Falls owes a lot to the “Tuna” plays, but this one is less slapstick and demands more if its actors because they have so little, beyond the script, to work with. 

One monocle, a change of voice, a black comb becoming a mustache, a swish to the walk, among other tricks, are the sparse materials these brilliant actors have to pull you in to the crazy but enjoyable story they will share.

Popcorn Falls is being co-produced with the Tipping Point Theater and runs through July 28.  For more information, check out www.williamstontheatre.or.