Review from The Stages of MN by Rob Dunkelberger
Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Regional Premiere Produced by Sidekick Theatre in Bloomington
“…The play is written by Katie Forgette and as the main character Linda O’Shea describes it, this is a memory play. Forgette has Linda introduce us to the members of her family before the story begins. She and the other characters will break the fourth wall several times throughout the play, a lot of the humor coming from the fact that we are viewing the 1970’s through our 2020’s eyes.
I don’t want to spoil any of the best jokes or the surprises to be had in the show but want to acknowledge one of Forgette’s cleverest inventions. Linda says that her father’s personality was so strong that in her memories he always does impressions of other people. This allows the actor playing the father to also play the local priest as well as the noisy woman from the church congregation. It’s a funny and practical way to keep the cast small while adding to the comic nature of the play.
The entire cast is wonderful, I don’t even have a favorite. Tara Borman plays Linda, whose memory this play is, she has the straight man as we all do in our memories. We are the normal ones while everyone around are a bit eccentric right? She does a nice job of playing both the detached narrator and her younger self within the memory. She’s warm and engages with the audience in a way that feels completely natural. Michelle Myers is Jo, the mother of the O’Shea household, and Tinia Moulder is her sister Terri who’s staying with them while on a break from her husband. These performers know how to play these 70’s women to a tee, they are at once recognizable without falling into the area of caricature. Okay, maybe I do have a slight favorite but if I do, it’s Audrey Parker as the 13 year old, little sister Becky. I always find it a difficult task for grown men and women to play kids. It’s really easy to come off as childish, which quickly becomes annoying. Parker side steps that pitfall with ease, creating a character that is entertaining and quirky, believing she’s 13. Not childish, but because she acts like a person with the understanding and imagination of a real 13 year old, obsessed with classic movies. Maybe it’s a little bit that too, she reminds me of myself at 13. Last but not least is Timothy Thomas who plays the Father, the Father (meaning the Priest), and the busy body woman who’s trying to suss out why the parish priest is so upset with the O’Shea family. In the tradition of comic actors playing multiple roles in a play, Thomas plays them all rather broad, nothing else would work, these are the outsized characters of Linda’s memories all embodied by her father because he was also bigger than life to her. Thomas is very funny as Linda’s Father Mike and the nosy neighbor. Then he does rather a 180 and plays the priest rather serious and stern, which is perfect, as that aspect would certainly be amplified in Linda’s mind. I really enjoyed everyone in this cast immensely as I have in their performances elsewhere.”