The Island Packet, Friday, March 3, 2006, by Gail Westerfield

'Auntie and Me' laughs in the face of death, dying

If you can't laugh at the pain of life, how about chuckling nervously at the absurdities of death? "Auntie and Me," a dazzling play by Morris Panych at South Carolina Repertory Company, asks its audiences to put aside their squeamishness and fear about the Ultimate End and look at how love, when we let it, can open us up to living.

Kemp (Jim Stark) quits his job and travels (with a mysteriously empty suitcase) to his Aunt Grace's (Pat Haskell) bedside. Though she's sent a note saying that she's old and dying, (which he says he initially misreads as "yodeling") she appears to be fairly well. This does not deter her nephew from reading a grief book and loudly planning every aspect of her funeral and disposal of her remains, as well as getting her to sign a will, leaving everything -- which doesn't look like much -- to him. Though completely silent for most of the play, Auntie proves to be plenty spry as the seasons change, nipping from a bottle hidden under the covers, knitting a sweater, and putting on a little powder. "Why are you putting on make-up?" her nephew asks. "Why not let the mortician do that?"

A year and a half later, Auntie and the nephew still are there. At first, the play moves through a series of short scenes, ending with black outs after hilariously dark one-liners from Stark. Sitting on his suitcase, for example, he says, "Let's not talk about anything depressing. Do you want to be cremated?" As time passes and their affection for one another subtly grows, the play's humor changes, as the jokes turn from Kemp's eagerness for Grace's death to a hilarious, sad look at Kemp's freakish upbringing, one which left him so "resoundingly unpopular" that his favorite childhood toy was a hair dryer hood.

The key to the success of the humor here is that Stark does not try to gain the audience's sympathy or laugh at himself; both characterizations of Kemp's misanthropy would ruin the bizarre sympathy he manages to evoke from the audience. He excuses his neglectful parents in one respect, saying his mother's "hands were always pretty full, what with the cigarette and the Scotch," and his father "somehow knew he was going to die. Of course, he shot himself..." Even his attempts to hasten Grace's end -- which painfully backfire while she remains oblivious -- don't lessen the odd affection you can't help but feel for him.

The mordant humor might not be for everyone but "Auntie and Me" is the sort of play where you sometimes laugh because you can't believe you just laughed. It's not all dark, either. There's also some very well-wrought physical comedy and a very touching ending.

Barbara Farrar, familiar to SC Rep audiences in numerous roles, directs the show, her first at SC Rep, with a remarkably sure hand. The pacing is terrific; few things are as annoying as a play with overly long-blackouts between scenes, but that is never the case in Auntie and me. What's more, the brilliant performances Farrar gets from her actors indicates her own background as an actor.

Stark is phenomenal in a very difficult role, creating a character who's somehow both realistic and completely absurd, a pathetic loser and genuinely good guy. He carries the dialogue virtually the entire play, and in spite of the self-referential quality of the character, never winks at the audience or laughs at his own jokes. Haskell is perfect, too, conveying volumes with a look and never stooping to sentimentality.