Katie Mack's in Windows was right up there with the best.
The play, which Mack wrote herself, calls for an actress who can switch with quicksilver ease from physical comedy to naked anguish, from housebound housewife Skyping with her therapist to daring voyeur obsessed with the neighbors to a woman crushed by loss. It's a lot of emotional territory to cover, and one wonders, since Mack wrote the script herself, whether it would work as well with any other actor in the role. But when a performer's this good, why quibble?
It's fascinating just to watch her watch the (never-seen) neighbors, her expression morphing from curiosity to embarrassment to arousal. But she's also in complete sync with the excellent Blane Pressler as her husband — sympathetic and funny as a man trying to sympathize and reconnect with his wife who, we learn, has reasons for being reclusive. Director Nolan Muna has orchestrated the couple's interactions with skill and sensitivity, and despite a few Fringe-clunky moments (a distractingly hideous couch which the actors have to keep moving around, a patently fake-y Girl Scout voice), the production grabs our attention from the first moment and doesn't let go.
There are moments in the play that are hilarious — like a painful attempt to recreate (with spatula and cinnamon rolls) some of the apparent BDSM antics seen through the window — and others that are painfully honest, as when the wife admits to an overwhelming sense of guilt about the collapse of her dream of a perfect family.
But as she discovers, despite what she thinks she's been watching, not all happy families are alike (sorry, Tolstoy), and what she really needs to look at is what she's doing to herself.
This is one of those Fringe shows that I wasn't going to see because the blurb didn't catch my interest. Then I saw the excerpt at the Fringe preview on Wednesday and put it on my must-see list. You should do the same.
The final performance of Windows in the Tampa International Fringe Festival takes place today, Sunday, May 14, at 5:15 p.m. at Silver Meteor Gallery, 2213 E. Sixth Ave., Tampa. Buy buttons and tickets at New World Brewery or at Silver Meteor. For more information, go to tampafringe.org.
This article appears in May 11-18, 2017.