Theater Review—

Shanahan & Maulella Do Very Well

In A Dramatic ‘Tryst’

By Julie Stern

WESTPORT — Maybe it’s just the flattering sense of being selected as a confidante, but it’s hard to hate a villain who confesses so honestly to you about his wickedness as George Love does to the audience in Karoline Leach’s riveting two-character drama, Tryst. Performances of the dark thriller continue at Westport Country Playhouse continue until August 23.

Set in turn of the (20th) century England, the play centers around George, as a swindler who makes a practice of marrying lonely women and abandoning them on the second day of the honeymoon (after he has gotten his hands on their little bit of money).

Explaining that he stalks women like game, watching for the telltale gesture or expression that alerts him to a likely victim — someone shy, friendless, vulnerable — the handsome rascal describes his technique for separating his potential conquest from the herd, and reeling her in with his charm.

Adelaide, a timid woman who works in the back room of a milliner’s store, sewing hats because she is not prepossessing enough to be allowed to wait on customers, seems the perfect quarry. She wears an expensive brooch, which she tells George, was willed to her by an elderly aunt, who also left her a legacy of fifty pounds.

In a whirlwind courtship, he persuades her to elope with him to the shabby seaside resort of Weston Super Mare, where he takes a room for them in a seedy boardinghouse. After all, George reassures us, he is never mean to the women. He gives them a wedding night of such attentive love, that by the next morning they are happy to transfer all their worldly wealth to their new husband’s safekeeping. After that, it’s but a simple matter to hop the nearest bus or train, never to be seen again.

Things begin to take an unexpected turn, however, when the apparently submissive Adelaide begins to show a far less pliant side. On their wedding night she would rather make tea and play cards than succumb to George’s romantic overtures. And then they begin to talk.

Probably George, polished in the art of lies and blandishments, has never held a serious conversation with a woman in his life. While Adelaide steadfastly refuses to take off her clothes for him, she reveals instead  the secret layers of her soul, the painful history of physical and emotional abuse that shaped her character.

Troubled and confused, George misses the train that was to be his getaway. Meanwhile, Adelaide begins to show signs of strength and determination that make her less of a helpless victim, and more of a woman with an agenda of her own.

The seaside tryst that was meant to be one more in George’s string of “love ‘em and leave ‘em” seductions turns out to be a far more complicated emotional interchange.

It is a dark story, but until the end, neither the audience nor George himself knows what is going to happen. Questions of trust are multifaceted, and the issue of whether we dare to allow our real selves to be seen, gives the work depth.

Mark Shanahan and Andrea Maulella do a wonderful job in portraying these offbeat and conflicted human beings. It is billed as a romantic thriller, but Tryst is a serious play as well.

(For tickets and additional information contact Westport Country Playhouse at 203-227-4177.

The play contains brief nudity.)