Reviewed by Matt Ritchey
Flat Tire Theater Company’s STUCK at the Stephanie Feury Theater has a very fun premise: a Disney-obsessed couple stuck on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride use the opportunity to break up… and fight about it. To add a whimsical Disney/LSD aspect, the animatronics on the ride start to tell the story of their past relationship and the couple starts to see things they never noticed before.
The concept is great and the denouement in the last five minutes has good dialogue, dramatic conflict, and reversal. Unfortunately, it feels like this scene was written first and the rest of the show was created to build up to it – and the writing, directing, and performances just don’t do the concept justice.
There are two primary issues at play. One is the directing – while the Wild Ride amusement car set piece is really pretty impressive and the way the actors maneuver it around is fun, the way the actors playing animatronics “coming to life” is unclear. Are they memories? Are they a dream? They exit and enter on cue, destroying the feeling that they are part of a ride on which the couple is stuck.
The major problem, however, is the script. This is the cheapest part of the production process and should always be well-workshopped before put into production. With such a fun conceit, the drama and comedy should be far more entertaining and less rote. Sure, “stuck” means both “stuck on the ride” and “stuck in their relationship,” and all the good story fodder is there – Don is too much of a manchild, Shannon is too afraid to chase her dreams, their stuck on the most hallucinogenic Disneyland ride – but those points are repeated so often that it’s not believable that this breakup conversation comes out of nowhere and the opportunities to do trippy dreamlike sequences is ignored in favor of basic “throwback”-style scenework.
STUCK, the show, is. It needs a big push to get up to speed, but it can get there.
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