The playing space at Silver Spring Stage is much more intimate than the CenterStage, where RCP performs. The first row of seats is only a few feet away, at eye level, and is usually well-lit by the spill from the stage lights. So we usually get a good look at all the humanity who come to see the show, and we’ve seen a number of specimens at Never the Sinner. There was the homeless guy who wandered in after the box office manager had closed up for the night. We wouldn’t have minded him at all, except that he started sorting through his shopping bags of bottles to be recycled, rattling the plastic bags and dropping the bottles on the floor. There was the community theater denizen who always rocks back and forth in his seat through the complete proceedings. The woman who brought her service dog with her wasn’t a problem, but the pooch got a little upset in scene 4 when Ryan and Sam start waltzing with each other, and started to bark. Everyone’s a dance critic. She got the dog calmed down for the rest of the show, but the curtain call—60 people banging their hands together—was too much, and the dog howled through it. There was the woman who seemed to be following along with a script. Maybe a WATCH judge who knocks off points for textual inaccuracies? Oh, and lest we forget, the helpful fellow at our preview performance who announced, as the lights and video projector finally went down after the announcement of the verdict, “That’s the end.”
For all the stem-winding bluster of the second act—the dueling counselors monologues—this is a show about sharp, tiny effects. Sam (Loeb) opens up his heart just a crack with a mournful, “I miss my mom,” and then he slams it shut again with, “Not that she deserves it, the stupid old cow.” Kevin, the sound designer, has built a sound plot that underscores nearly the entire play, but he drops it out to highlight Ryan’s (Leopold’s) killer speech, “to me he is like a hard, perfect gem.” Craig’s (Darrow’s) best moment is just one bitten-off word, and it comes in a passage where he tells us how horrible it will be to hang the killers: “I can see them falling through space and stopped by the rope around their necks.” Maybe the best thing about the role I’m portraying is the fabulous double-breasted suit that Eric found for me through his Washington Opera connections. Or perhaps the eye-roll and cheek-puff that I do when Robin (Germaine) goes off message for the third time during her testimony. But seriously, I think I’m doing a good job technically and using my instrument well, especially when I remember to breathe.