Pop Smart - Plays with food at Theatre in the Square and Actor’s Express

Photo by Zak Topor

My combined review of Theatre in the Square’s The Belle of Amherst and Actor’s Express’ When Something Wonderful Ends will run next week. The two one-woman shows have a small detail in common that bears mentioning — both include sweets in a way that offers a audience participation.

On opening night of When Something Wonderful Ends, the audience was offered individually-wrapped Brach’s cinnamon hard candies while going into the theater. (I abstained, because sometimes I mistake that candy for Red Hots, so I’m gun-shy.) In the autobiographical play, Sherry Kramer (played by Vicki Ellis Gray, pictured) describes the candies as not only her favorite, but the favorite of her late mother, to whom the play pays tribute. Sharing the candy provided a way to evoke the woman’s memory through the audience’s taste buds.

Incidentally, Kramer sent a letter that director Freddie Ashley read in his curtain speech, which speaks amusingly to an important bit of theater etiquette:

“Please unwrap and enjoy the cinnamon candies now – or put them aside for after the show. Please do not unwrap them during the show, even if you do it painfully slowly, excruciatingly slowly, as if you were a deer in headlights who thinks that if he doesn’t move you can’t see him. Of course you can see him. He’s right there. It doesn’t matter how long he doesn’t move, he’s not going to disappear. It doesn’t matter how sloooowly you unwrap your candy. We can hear you. Thank you.”

The Belle of Amherst didn’t offer the entire audience an actual treat, but provided the means of preparing one later.