Double dip
The new Interplayers production, “Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks” consists of six dance lessons in six scenes. This 2003 Richard Alfieri play is about a middle-aged, gay dance teacher who shows up every week at a Florida condo to conduct a private lesson for the lonely widow of a Baptist minister.
Each scene ends with the two characters performing a few steps from that particular lesson – cha-cha, fox trot, etc. – to recorded music. A finale makes seven scenes in all.
Don’t get the wrong idea: This is not a musical or a dance show in the manner of “Fosse” or “Stomp.” It’s essentially a relationship play about two opposites and their surprising friendship.
Kathie Doyle-Lipe, the gifted Spokane actress-dancer-comedienne, plays the widow, Lily Harrison. Joel Richards, an actor from New York, plays the acerbic dance teacher, Michael Minetti, a former Broadway chorus boy.
Esta Rosevear, Interplayers’ new managing director, directs this show.
The play had its origins in Florida, when playwright and screenwriter Alfieri (“Sisters,” “A Friendship in Vienna”) attended a luncheon at St. Petersburg hotel. A dance competition was taking place and Alfieri began to wonder why all the older women were dancing with younger men. Then he began to wonder about their relationships.
The result was “Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks,” which opened in Los Angeles in 2001 with David Hyde Pierce (“Frasier”) and Uta Hagen. It was received well; Curtain Up reviewer Laura Hitchcock correctly predicted that it would “have a long and happy life in dinner theater, community theater and wherever two good actors are willing to follow in Hagen and Pierce’s footsteps.”
When Mark Hamill and Polly Bergen tackled it on Broadway in 2003, the reception was considerably cooler. Bruce Weber of The New York Times called it “lame and utterly predictable.” The show closed after only 28 performances, of which 26 were previews.
A London run, starring Claire Bloom and Billy Zane, didn’t fare much better. Critics absolutely savaged it; “remorselessly terrible” and “tooth-rottingly sweet” were two of the milder sentiments. It closed ahead of schedule, after only two months.
Yet this play has defied the odds and the critics to become an international success story, with dozens and dozens of productions mounted all over the world.
The fact that it’s a “two-hander” (theater parlance for a two-actor show) doesn’t hurt. It’s simple to cast and inexpensive to produce. Yet there’s more to it than that.
“Critics may dismiss it, but most audiences will love it,” wrote Hitchcock of the L.A. production. “If we have to pay for a share of clichés and a sometime sitcom feel, it’s a small price for the play’s genuine moments of humor and pain.”
Audiences at Interplayers will also get the chance to experience a few real-life dance lessons. During the course of the run, the theater will raffle off six lessons for two from Simply Dance Studio.
Let the waltzing begin.