“Slow Food” Serves Up Pandemic-Friendly Aristotelian Unity, but Little Else

To state the obvious, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a painful reality for theatre, forcing many companies unable or unwilling to stay dark for the duration into unfamiliar waters. But sympathetic as a theatre critic may be to their struggles to stay afloat, reviewing such work entails focusing on the finished product. 

Unfortunately, International City Theatre’s productionof Wendy MacLeod’s Slow Food, is plagued by a poor script and technical deficiencies that are conspicuous despite the play’s straightforwardly minimal conceit.

To celebrate the commencement of their life as empty-nesters, a man (Stu James) and woman (Meredith Thomas) have come to Palm Springs for their 23rd anniversary. But so far things have not gone well — problems with the hotel, etc. Ravenous, they’ve come to one of the only nearby restaurants with a kitchen still open late on a Sunday night. But with Stephen (Perry Ojeda) as their waiter, it seems like they may  never get to eat.

That is almost literally all there is to Slow Food, which faithfully observes the Aristotelian  unities of time, place, and action. For 90 minutes we’re at the couple’s table as they talk with each other and their curiously cunctatory server. His motivation for not bringing their food is never even implied; we’re just meant to take it as funny, as if MacLeod is trying to comedically transplant a strand of No Exit while denuding it of meaning. And although the conversation does occasionally stray from (to paraphrase) “We want our food,” “Can’t we get our food?,” “Gosh, I’m hungry — I wish we could get our food!,” the sorties into middle-aged married life are boilerplate  at best.

Although undoubtedly many in ICT’s core audience (of which I have a decent sense from over a decade’s worth of plays) will like MacLeod’s sense of humor better than I (even if Slow Food is one of the weakest scripts ICT’s put on), the shortcomings in the production itself cannot be written off as a matter of taste. Because by its very nature Slow Food does not require many different set-ups or shots, the few that are employed better be good, particularly because so little action happens in frame. Alas, all of them suffer from one prominent defect or another. For starters, it is painfully evident that the actors were never in the same room, each recorded at home via Zoom (or a similar service) against digitally-inserted backgrounds. Good for COVID safety protocols, bad for theatrical viewing, particularly as director Marya Mazor has chosen to tell basically the entire story as a series of single shots, preventing us from ever seeing the characters interact. Yes, half the battle is already lost when you can’t get your actors in the same room to play off each other; but ICT surrenders the other half without putting up any kind of creative fight.

This shortcoming is all the more pronounced for the fact that even the framing of these few, simple shots is generally lacking. The most prevalent problem here is how Thomas is consistently closer to her camera than James is to his, meaning an extra loss of continuity resulting from her head being notably bigger than his each time the shots cut back and forth between them. A slight direction to Thomas or James to minutely adjust her/his position is all it would have taken to eliminate this particular problem. This may seem like a mere cavil, but seeing the disparity over and over, often several times a minute, is jarring.

Subjective valuations of the script aside, ICT may have been on the right track to choose for an internet production a show with a simple setting and minimal action. But without creative approaches to the inherent challenges of delivering theatre this way, Slow Food feels like no more than a stopgap measure by thespians unsure what else to do right now.

International City Theatre’s Slow Food streams on-demand Thursday–Sunday through May 16. Cost: $33. For “tickets” or more information, visit ICTlongbeach.org.