It's hard to take "Almighty Bob" seriously as a comedy. Opening the 2012 Acts of Faith Festival (along with Barksdale's "Always … Patsy Cline"), Chamberlayne Actors Theatre's production is a hodgepodge with little discernable message.
The opening-night audience did some laughing — not much in the first act, though — at the cartoonish characters and situations created by playwright Tom Mula. The 2001 play takes place at the Providence Assisted Living Home, run by the woebegone Dr. Wally. He's a sweet guy, a loser in love who's well-liked by the residents. There's a wisecracking aide, Colleen, and an evil owner, Mr. Carmichael (referred to as both "Snidely" and "Whiplash"), who wants to close the home and build a more profitable business, like a Krispy Kreme.
Into the home comes Bob, the wheelchair-bound father of Karen, who herself is an obvious potential love interest for Wally. No sooner does Bob arrive than the cafeteria overflows with hamburger buns and fish sticks (loaves and fishes, get it?).
Bob's a wisecracking, skirt-chasing old coot around whom things get weird. Lights flash and Motown songs play and people freeze. The Grim Reaper (here named Joey JoJo) stalks the residents; Colleen can see him, though others can't.
There are 2 1/2 interminable hours of this.
The estimable Jacqueline Jones directed, and though she has her cast and crew execute clever special effects, she fails to find any consistency among the acting styles of her players or any momentum in the pacing.
There's a realistic and expansive set by Jason Winebarger, the aforementioned well-done (but vastly overused) effects by Smoke and Mirrors LLC, with Gretta Daughtrey's creative lighting and Buddy Bishop's sound design.
There are a couple of performances worth noting — Donna Marie Miller as Karen and Donald Evans as Joey bring real presence to their roles, and Chris Yarbrough's Wally earns some sympathy. Scarlett Black's Gladys, the cafeteria lady, is amusing, though she seems to have wandered in from a different play.
But this is a messy bit of business, with nothing onstage that is not telegraphed far in advance, and nothing that makes much sense. Spiritual concepts and Shakespeare are thrown around in random fashion; a riff on kissing frogs sounds like no conversation real people would ever have. A running gag about Wally's perennial recital of "The Highwayman" at the semiannual talent show quickly gets tiring.
Lord, deliver us from "Almighty Bob."
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