I mention this because there’s a relatively new theater company presenting original work in the Bay area, and I want local scribes (and, of course, audiences) to make themselves aware of it. It’s called the Lab Theater Project, it’s run by Tampa resident Owen Robertson, and it puts up plays at Ybor City’s Silver Meteor Gallery. I missed the Lab’s first two shows, but I’ve just come from Toby’s Game, written by Robertson himself, and suddenly I see What Might Be: a place where Hillsborough and Pinellas writers can hone their craft, risk some experiments, try out their brilliant ideas. True, Toby’s Game is not a complete success – it’s too relentlessly bleak, and its second act is too long – but there are scenes in the play that any writer might be proud of, and that might represent a step in the playwright’s progress toward real achievement. Most dramatists need some starter plays before they come into their own – I think of Arthur Miller, Wendy Wasserstein, Sam Shepard and many others – and a venue like the Lab might just provide that sort of help. It also could be the place where an eventual full flowering occurs.
The plot of Toby’s Game is simple — too simple, as it turns out. It’s about Toby (the talented Jeff M. Lucas), a brain-damaged casualty of the War in Iraq, and Marsha (excellent Lisa Brave), his older sister, who looks after him in her grumpy, boozy way. Into this difficult, cash-strapped menage comes Bobby (the not quite convincing Eddie Gomez), Toby’s old friend and a long-time admirer of Marsha not put off by her querulous temperament. Marsha’s angry at Bobby for failing to protect Toby when the two men went off to war, and Bobby’s angry at himself, so much so that he signed on for multiple tours of duty in the hopes that he’d get himself killed. But miraculously he stayed alive, and now he wants to do something salutary for Toby and Marsha. He’ll first have to climb over Martha’s tall wall of resistance, though. And neither he nor Marsha can let hyper-sensitive Toby understand what a toll his care has taken on his overburdened sister. Because Toby, we learn, committed an atrocity in Iraq, and can still be suicidal. Since Marsha is as likely to shout her opinions as to speak them (and there’s quite a lot of shouting in the play), it’s only a matter of time before she makes a pivotal mistake.
That’s the story — and it’s told in six well-written scenes by Robertson. Where the play needs work is in its ideas, emotional and intellectual. The main problem with Toby’s Game is that once you’ve figured out the basic attitudes of the three characters, there’s not much in the way of progress. Marsha is a crabbily altruistic alcoholic when the play starts, and 90 minutes in, there’s not much more to say about her. Toby is both selfish and self-loathing, Bobby is generous and forgiving, the multiple flashbacks don’t tell us very much that we couldn’t have guessed, and there are too many unsurprising climaxes in Act Two. Still, the living room/kitchenette set by Robertson and Don Allen is one of the most credibly realistic I’ve seen on the Silver Meteor stage, and Beth Tepe-Robertson’s costumes are just right for all three personages. Robertson’s directing is skillful, even when a scene gives us More Of The Same. The play needs more inventiveness. As the scenes pass, the meaning should build.
But playwrights learn by doing: this production of Toby’s Game may have flaws, but it can also help author Robertson develop his undeniable talent. I for one will be delighted to see what he writes next — when a locality breeds playwrights, it also breeds fans. All right, this show didn’t thrill me, but I honestly hope that Lab Theater Project prospers. The Bay area needs it — and needs it to take some local scribes along for the ride.
Toby’s Game
Two-and-half stars
Silver Meteor Gallery, 2213 E. Sixth Ave., Ybor.
Through Nov. 13. Thurs.-Sun., 8 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 2 p.m.
$15.
813-238-1756.
This article appears in Nov 10-17, 2016.
