Black Box’s ‘Loser’s Bracket’ Is A Winning Comedy
Familiarity may breed contempt, but it also breeds humor, especially with the addition of perspective, and you’ll find each element of this formula in “Loser’s Bracket,” the latest show at Moline’s Black Box Theatre.
It’s always great to see original works on the local stage, all the better when those works are of a quality to deserve that spot, and “Bracket,” by area playwright Clay Sander, certainly fits that description. The play’s strength is its dialogue and character, both of which ring clear and true to small-and-midsized towns and the long-standing and sometimes strained relationships of their occupants. It plays out like a sort of small-town, warped-glass “Cheers,” with a little bit of a comedic crime twist to pull out those elements of character and bring them into the comedic spotlight.
“Bracket” starts with a scene familiar to anyone who’s spent some time around tavern culture – a night of drinking away the sorrows of a lost softball game, licking away wounds salted by years of failures on the field and off, with some of the scars going back decades. It’s about the softball game, but it’s about more than that, with all the pitfalls and pathetic mistakes of years piling up within these characters who have little but alcohol to keep the ghosts at bay.
The characters feel the sting of the years to varying degrees, based upon their lot and luck. There’s Hitch Bigwood (Brant Peitersen), the alpha of the group, who’s slipped into money after a work injury, turned it into owning the bar Boo’s, and seems to be the smartest and trickiest of the clan. Boo Koontz (Emmalee Hilburn) likewise seems relatively well-settled, with an optimistic and upbeat demeanor. Sheriff Terry Edwards (Kevin Keck) is mostly a sigh of inertia, cruising along as the law in a sleepy town, with little more to do than lurch towards his pension.
However, things are far more messy with the rest of the lot. Ethan Banks (Mark Kulhavy) is fraught with financial problems, Tiny Willits (Tony Trulson) has those and more, dealing with a divorce but still holding a torch for his wife, Trisha (Kelci Eaton), and eating tinfoil over the humiliation of her leaving him for the long-standing town douchebag, Rick (Michael Richards).
I don’t really want to spoil the plot of “Loser’s Bracket,” because part of the fun is following along the path with these down-and-outers, but it involves a number of crisscrossing schemes of insurance fraud and double-cross, with the bitterness of disappointment and frenemy hostility thrown in. But the plot itself is more Maguffin than anything, just pulling things along. The real draw is the characters and their interactions and the comedy that stumbles from their oft-drunken mouths.
With dialogue and characters this full of life, you’ve got to have a great cast to bring them to life, and “Bracket” has got that covered, with a terrific group. Peitersen is a great comedic actor, particularly in darker, grungier material, as he showed during his time at District Theater, especially with his work in the fantastic “A Behanding In Spokane.” This isn’t anywhere near as dark, but it’s got its ashy edges, and Peitersen plays Hitch with just the right about of scuzziness and smarm. Hilburn is great as his counter, the sunny and down-to-earth Boo. And Keck is sublimely deadpan as Sheriff Edwards.
The two driving forces of the idiocy of the schemes, Kulhavy’s Ethan and Trulson’s Willits are both great as the insipid sad sacks whose cringe-worthy moves keep the laughs and the plot going, Eaton is appropriately sour as Trisha (and in various other roles), and Richards oozes slime as the arrogant Rick (and various other parts as well). It’s a terrific cast, well suited to the parts and finely directed in their pacing and timing by director David Bonde, that all seems to be having a lot of fun with the color and spice of Sander’s earthy and pitch perfect dialogue.
The denouement whips by in the second act much faster than expected, at an odd juxtaposition to the slower pace of the first, but that’s a minor flaw. “Loser’s Bracket” is definitely worth seeing, it’s a lot of fun, a lot of laughs, and it’ll feel very real to most, which is one of its greatest strengths. This “Loser” is a winner.
