Review: Short Story Long, Thursday May 9, Mainline Theatre

I wish this play had been terrible; this review would be so much easier to write because I could fill the page up with bile. Instead local Pumpkin Theatre’s Short Story Long is so powerfully mediocre in every imaginable respect it leaves me at a loss.

Ok so like the plot and stuff; famous Montreal writer Lincoln Kennedy is dead and he’s left his fortune to his wife Julianne Kennedy but all his writing and their copywrites have been left to “AK” that is Amalthea King a former lover from years earlier. Amalthea shows up to ask the widow Julianne Kennedy not to contest the will. It’s a two hander so we’re stuck with these two for the next 75 minutes.

The plot is very very predictable - the comedic and dramatic beats the characters go through is very very predictable - there is a “twist” near the end which I figured out within the first ten minutes. The acting is passable with Stephanie Buxton stealing the show as she is all quirks and ticks and clipped speech. Stephanie Breton’s Amalthea is flat but I chalk it up to the direction the actress received. The only time the two fail spectacularly is at some high emotion a little past the midway of the play when their two characters start screaming at each other and it degrades into just lousiness.

So the shebang is written and directed by Montreal’s Joel Fishbane. He’s got some good going on here. His dialog does have some polish (a little too much but still….) and it’s always a good idea to write women-centred pieces and ummmm… yeah…