Hate Mail @ Pegasus Theatre (Bath House)
Photo by John Harvey
—Review by Ramona Harper
A play with the word “hate” in the title, given today’s toxic news cycle, is scary, wouldn’t you agree? At best, you might be expecting a modern-day morality play or perhaps an uplifting take on disturbing current social issues. Unexpectedly, Hate Mail—the opener for Pegasus Theatre’s 37th season—is an entertaining and romantic comedy that belies its attention-grabbing title. Its authors, Bill Corbett and Kira Obolensky, describe it as “an alternative to A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters.” They developed the script by exchanging in-character “letters” via email—and the result is a funny, quirky adventure between two cute, quirky characters.
Preston Dennis Jr, a Midwesterner, posts a letter requesting a refund for a broken snow globe of the Statue of Liberty he purchased at a Times Square souvenir shop on a touristy visit to the Big Apple. When store associate Dahlia Markle too-forcefully responds that there are no refunds, the story line hilariously builds forward in the aftermath of her getting fired.
There are probably an infinite number of boy-meets-girl romances, but Hate Mail is likely an original; all the play’s dialogue between Preston and Dahlia, played by Shane Cearnal and Bethany Soder, happens entirely through spoken versions of the letters (and post-it notes) they send through the mail, and from their online exchanges.
Directed by David Meglino for the cozy black-box theater space of the Bath House Cultural Center, Hate Mail has an adventurous, epic quality for a 90-minute production that even includes an intermission. Two simple stage props sit atop two desks (prop design by John Harvey and set design and build by D. Aidan Wright) that anchor the story’s sweeping timeline—from the manual typewriter era to the laptop computer.
The right amount of histrionic over-acting required to make the comedy believable is ably performed by Cearnal as the neurotic Preston and Soder as Dahlia, who is prone to rashes and upchucking when things get too anxiety-provoking. They are (so clearly to us) two perfectly matched, neurotic soulmates.
Preston and Dahlia experience the personal agony and ecstasy of finding themselves through discovering each other, on a roller coaster ride of funny-boned high and lows, and adoring pronouncements followed by biting sarcasm. Conflict rises and subsides; drama stirs up memories of falling in and out of love, pleasure and pain—yet always thoroughly entertaining.
If you read between the copious lines in Hate Mail (kudos to Cearnal and Sodar for mastering so much dialogue, even if spoken much too rapidly at times), the unspoken message is that face-to-face communication is best. Hate Mail might also leave you feeling emotionally frustrated for the characters onstage. You long for Preston and Dahlia to stop talking to each other through posted narratives. You want them to directly encounter each other and not through any medium. And what does that feeling of frustration say about the way we communicate with each other today?
Hate Mail is a delightful romantic comedy that’s worth seeing not only for pure entertainment but also for its subtle inner probing on how we might all better communicate with one another.
Perhaps Preston says it best: “The battle continues.”
When: through November 5th
Where: The Bath House Cultural Center, 521 E. Lawther Drive, Dallas, TX 75218
