Write a play.
That is the premise of Raphael B0b-Waksberg's The Mike and Morgan show presented by Shelby Company. There are plenty of memory plays out there, but this one has a very unique voice. Morgan is a childhood friend of Mike who dies his first week of college and Mike has decided to write down everything so that he "won't forget anything"
What follows is a touching cleverly crafted narrative that is acted with such commitment that at the end, you feel like you need to call your best friend. Waksberg has a penchant for comedy and pathos that reminded me of Christopher Durang's The Marriage of Bette and Boo. In much the same style, he gives us hilarious scenarios including a scene in which we hear a eulogy for a bully, see a truly gross way of signing a drawing, and watch a drunken confession by a jock. The thing that makes it even more unique? All of these scenarios happen using only two actors!
Brian Miskell and Emma Galvin are both charming as Mike and Morgan and easily keep you engaged throughout the piece. The show is staged with simplicity by Lacy Post who has clearly had experience with memory plays before. The show moves along at a great pace and provides laugh out loud moments with moments for serious reflection. The sequences in which Mike and Morgan drive also reminded me a lot of the clever use of theatricality employed by plays like How I learned to Drive and Reckless. It's not often that actors can pull off miming opening and shutting car doors, but Post directs it with such a tongue in cheek style and both Galvin and Miskell are so in tune with the feel of the piece that it works every time and even serves a s great metaphor for Mike's belief's about his memory of Morgan vs. what actually happened.
You can still get tickets here for this lovely piece, but make sure you snag them quick before they disappear.
Excelsior!
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