by Guest Reviewer T.E. Klunzinger
Nearly fifty years ago, the musical “Company” focused on the unattached Bobby and his many married friends. There has always been the lingering question that Bobby might, in fact, be gay.
“Significant Other” by Josh Harmon, the third and final main show of MSU’s Summer Circle, is remarkably similar in setting and tone to “Company,” but without the music and with the fact that you know right off the bat that our hero Jordan (Max Sanders) is quite definitely gay. It’s now the 21st Century in New York City, with laptops, cellphones and all the other trappings of 20-something professionals.
Jordan’s three Best Friends are all women (Kathryn Stahl, Kristy Allen, Karen Vance) who over the course of the first act successively find Mr. Right (Curran Jacobs, Greg Hunter) and get married: wedding bells are indeed breaking up that old gang of his.
While the girlfriends provide continuing faux-romantic advice on Jordan’s hot guy of the moment, his only continuing counsel comes from his increasingly feeble Grandma Helene (Zussman), who ultimately observes, “Life is a long book, and you’re in a difficult chapter.”
While Director Tony Caselli, stepping out from Williamston Theatre, keeps the action moving right along in the episodic first act, the script tends to play like a (cable) TV sitcom, albeit with a decidedly gay slant. It’s only in the second act when things become more serious as Jordan approaches desperation, what with his girlfriends all married and nobody else in his life.
The ever-versatile Sanders delivers a tour-de-force monologue to this point in the second act, complemented by Stahl who matches him in intensity. The others actors, all but one having just graduated with Master’s Degrees in Acting, are uniformly excellent in their varied roles. (Zussman has long since earned her Master’s in Life.)
“Significant Other” has three more shows, at 8:00 pm Thursday through Saturday, while the adult comedy “Smudge” repeats at 10:00 on Friday and Saturday. The Summer Circle Kids’ Camp performance is Friday at 6:30, with a Wedding Dance Party onstage at 7:30 on both Friday and Saturday.
More info at
http://theatre.msu.edu/productions/summer-circle-theatre