LATHAM, N.Y. — Carol Max, the artistic director of Curtain Call Theatre calls “Native Gardens,” “a play of bad manners”.
It opens tonight and plays through June 9.
As she describes the work, the plot supports her explanation. It’s essentially about a couple who have a boundary dispute and a conflict in garden styles.
An elderly couple getting ready for retirement is devoted to their English garden. A trendy young couple buys the house next door and plants a native garden, one that contains plants that are environmentally “good for the planet.”
When the young couple discovers that the older couple’s fence that separates the gardens is two feet into their property things move from polite and gracious to angry and spiteful.
Max, who is co-directing the play with Steve Fletcher, says “It’s filled with comic moments and genuinely funny scenes.” In support of her opinion, she points out that since 2018, “Native Gardens” has been among the top play titles produced annually throughout the country.
However, though funny, she expects the audience will also recognize other issues that exist under the absurd, slapstick silliness within the play.
The older couple are white New Englanders from “old money” while the newcomers are darker-skinned Americans of Mexican descent. Max feels it’s no accident the work is set in Washington, D.C.
She points out the not so obvious. Between the neighbors’ differences in age, background, political leanings and the color of their skin there is a lot of room to express latent prejudices.
To Max, these differences and the location explain what the play is really about. The idea of a very successful professional couple of Mexican descent fighting with a privileged white couple over a fence is a metaphor for contemporary political issues.
Indeed, there’s a whole lot of “isms” to pack in a 90-minute comedy. Max agrees and says she and Fletcher are very much aware that the play is first and foremost a comedy. “The audience will make the connections without having to beat them over the head. Truth is transparent,” she says.
She also feels that helping to lessen the heavy-handed potential within the play is that playwright Karen Zacarias writes the Latin couple as having their own flaws and senses of entitlement.
Another wise element in the work is that Tanya, the Latin wife is 9 months pregnant. For Max it’s a subtle way of bringing the next generation into the situation. “To me, it offers hope,” she says.
Explaining her thoughts, she continues, “The comedy in the play comes from the idea that people escalate minor issues into major battles. It’s always funny to see smart people acting silly.”
She continues, pointing out that comedy doesn’t work if it doesn’t reflect real life. “So the question I hope audiences will ask themselves is, why do we keep behaving this way? Maybe as humans, we can learn to be good neighbors?”
“Native Gardens” opens Thursday, May 23 at Curtain Call Theatre in Latham. It runs through June 9. For tickets and schedule information curtaincalltheatre.com
