‘The Hat Box’ @ Rover Dramawerks
Show photos by Charlotte Taylor
—Jan Farrington
I like my comedy with a little meat on its bones (femur, skull, whatever). Not just fluff, but humor that gets under the skin, digs into some hard truths about people and life…and still makes you double up with laughter.
Eric Coble’s play The Hat Box—having its area premiere at Rover Dramawerks, directed by Charlotte Taylor—is just such a critter, a laugh-filled show that has the audience nodding their heads at the accurate depiction of some of life’s “fraught” moments: losing a parent (and surviving the funeral) is bad enough—but what about the awful-ness of clearing out the family home?
Two sisters (their Mom died some years ago) are back in the old neighborhood, dealing with the stuff their Dad Jerry left behind. Practical, organized Claire (Jamie Gutzler) has a schedule, and a family waiting for her to fly home. Flighty, impulsive Winnie (Laura Sosnowski) flits from room to room, adding to “my pile” of keepsakes. Their memories of their girlhoods hardly ever line up, they snipe over old grievances (Claire left home early and, says Winnie, left her behind with the folks), and they’re flipping through every single one of Dad’s B-grade mysteries to find the $10s and $20s he tucked away in the pages.
Gutzler and Sosnowski build convincing grumpy (and very different) characters, and Sakura Brunette’s costumes finish things off—with Claire’s neutral-toned, clean-lined clothes vs. Winnie’s mix of rock T-shirt, India-print bell bottoms and floral lace topper. Claire is cool, a bit distant, and claims she’s not a bit sentimental. Winnie jumps around, is upset easily, and can’t stop talking about a gravy boat. But when she finds a disturbing object in a hat box (one of several in Jerry’s closet), she’s off and running, literallly.
The sisters are gobsmacked. Mom was a secretary, Dad an engineer. In light of Winnie’s discovery, they wonder: just how well did we really know them? What could explain what’s in that hat box?
They’ll have to consult Aunt Esther (Ruth Hale), almost the last leaf on the family tree. She’s in “senior housing” and in a wheelchair, but zips between real-time sharpness and somewhat hazy memories of the old days—or the opposite, if the mood takes her. Together, the three of them are hilarious, concocting wild theories about the past, and getting on each other’s last nerves. Esther thinks Jerry’s boyhood best friend Stanley (Anthony Magee) might know plenty, and works on Winnie to push for a road trip to see Stan and wife Marsha (Vivian Reed).
It could seem they’re making progress—but there’s confusion piled on confusion, what with the characters’ mixed motives and memories of old romances, beach vacations, boys’ weekends, and some lifetimes of off-kilter marriages in the mix. Will they ever get to the truth—or even a version of it everyone can live with? Hale’s Aunt Esther is wonderfully spicy and manipulative, her bright eyes sure she’s twirled her nieces into a state…and will get her way.
Tony-, Emmy- and Pulitzer-nominated playwright Coble has a terrific ear for sharp and believable dialogue (even when people are talking crazy), and I stopped counting the unexpected laugh lines (imo, the best kind of can’t-see-it-coming comedy). And he has a deft way of mixing verbal and physical hilarity: director Taylor and the cast keep things moving with chases, wrestling, shoved wheelchairs, threatening walking sticks, and (Winnie’s specialty) fierce shaking of the hat box in the face of anyone she’s confronting.
Magee’s Stanley is a dapper, white-haired man who had a late-life “falling out” with Jerry (the sisters’ late Dad), but won’t say why. Second wife Marsha (Vivian Reed) seems a bit of a doormat, but shows another side of her character when pushed too far. And with Aunt Esther in fine fettle, soooo many things start to come out. Watching Stanley’s outraged face turn a darker pink than his shirt—and Marsha’s eyes narrow to slits as she watches him—alert us to the coming fireworks.
It’s a tight, all-in, and very funny cast onstage—and they keep up the pace to the last wild seconds of the show. Nice to make a clean getaway (it isn’t our family this time!) and wander home with the sound of laughter in our ears.
WHEN: March 6-22, 2025
WHERE: Cox Playhouse, 1517 H Avenue, Plano
WEB: roverdramawerks.com
