There’s no issue in Florida that’s closer to, um, home than real estate—and none is more ripe for satire.
That’s what playwright Hannah Benitez is bringing us with “For Closure!,” which premiered last weekend at freeFall Theatre in St. Petersburg. It centers on a pair of Realtors, Raven (Renata Eastlick) and Amanda (Sara DelBeato), who are trying to keep their agency afloat in the town of Gulfpalm. With the help of a flamboyant psychic (Matthew McGee), they set about to save an historic (and possibly haunted) building and fight the influence of a shady politico.
Matthew McGee? Flamboyant? Who woulda thunk? He chatted with Creative Loafing Tampa Bay recently along with fellow freeFall favorite Kelly Pekar and Producing Artistic Director Eric Davis, who’s directing the show.
McGee won’t be wearing drag this time out—at least, not female drag. For the role of Camille Chevalier Milk (which Benitez created with McGee in mind), he’ll be channeling camp icons like comic Dom Deluise, Puerto Rican astrologer Walter Mercado, and the bewigged and ever caftan-ated Rip Taylor.
So yes, there will be caftans. And wigs! DelBeato is an accomplished wig-maker as well as an actor, and she and McGee have been having a high time figuring out the right shade of garish for Camille’s coiffure(s).
“It’s been very funny, sending each other pictures and pictures of wigs,” says McGee. “I can’t wait to spray tan.”
He was also happy to discover that he gets to spend part of the show on a mobility scooter, meaning perhaps that the 50-year-old actor could continue playing Camille into his senior citizen years. (Benitez has already received interest in her script from theaters in Florida and Michigan and from commercial producers.)
Kelly Pekar, who now lives in Brooklyn, New York, remains one of freeFall’s most beloved performers, known first as an ingénue in roles like Cinderella in “Into the Woods” and Clara in “The Light in the Piazza.” It wasn’t until Davis asked her to play multiple roles in the company’s first Sherlock Holmes romp, “Baskerville,” that we saw her versatility in full flower, playing a whirlwind of male and female roles with comic panache.
In “For Closure!,” she’s again getting the chance to play multiple characters, including an exotic dancer determined to unionize area strippers, an eccentric bird lady, an oligarch’s wife, and the trophy wife of a local politician.
Pekar and Benitez met in 2016 in freeFall’s production of “Mr. Burns—A Post-electric Play.” (Benitez has been in six freeFall shows in all.) Since then, the two have collaborated on numerous projects, including Benitez’s “Dike,” which was rapturously reviewed at Sarasota’s Urbanite Theater in 2018, the first of her plays to be produced in our area.
Davis has long been a fan of Benitez’s talents as a writer as well as an actor, and when she approached him about her wish to do a comedy, he was all about it. Though farce is not the genre she’s most known for, Benitez brings a mastery of playwriting structure along with a willingness to collaborate which has made the process of working on “For Closure!” a pleasure, says Pekar.
McGee agrees. “I feel most at home comedically in many ways with Hannah. We think the same things are funny, so that has been a joy. And honestly, for some actors it might be nerve-racking, but she’s in there with Eric and we’re changing material and jokes on the fly, like little tweaks, and it’s just so much fun.”
As cast and crew move onto the set, they’ll test what Davis calls “the practicalities” of the script—which, like any classic farce, involves doors, many doors. “People running in and out of rooms to be heard by certain people and not by other people—all the things that happen in farce—are present in this,” he says.
McGee (who is also freeFall’s marketing and communications director) references “Poltergeist,” “The Birdcage,” even “Arsenic and Old Lace” when describing “For Closure!”—all enticing antecedents.
Most appealing of all: Benitez’s characters are “completely off their rockers.”
Which sounds like the world of Florida real estate, all right.
Tickets to see “For Closure!” at St. Petersburg’s freeFall Theatre Company on Wednesdays-Sundays through May 11 are still available and start at $25. There is no show on Friday, May 2.
