Short Review: Well created, thoughtful piece that explores the ties of love and potential loss due to life circumstances.
Long review: Having worked in factories for two different periods in my life, the play resonated in the dangers and hazards that can face you when working around chemicals over long periods of time. Wade (Matt Leonard) arrives to visit Sherry (Laura Jacobs) on the day he is certain he and other coworkers have been diagnosed with an unnamed lung disease from working with slurry at a candy factory. Wade brings this information to Sherry, his ex girlfriend, before anyone else, lamenting the fact that he lost her, the only good thing he ever had. The story walks through the politics of the plant, the favoritism, and the relationships, and ends with Mike (Davis DeRock), arriving home to find Sherry rebuffing Wade from a sexual advance.
The scenic design was wonderful and the acting was perfect. There was a large amount of fight choreography involved. The play was simple in the plot, but underneath, a larger story of corporate greed, secrets, and the politics within a factory of those who work in the production areas and those who work in the office areas. Wade shows his disdain and jealousy of Mike, both for being Sherry’s current love interest and that he was hired into the factory directly into a management role, thus prodding Wade to reveal information about Mike that will ruin him.
For this particular show, there were a lot of questions unanswered. What was the additional information about Mike’s past with the accident with the dump truck? Where did Sherry and Wade go wrong?
I think Mike Rice’s work is incredibly polished and the show actually needs a longer running time to allow the characters to move through their story lines, as there are some arcs missing in this particular rendition of his work. There is a lot here, and what was in the Fringe production was extremely well made, but I got the sense there were items I either was missing (due to not hearing them) or were actually left out. So often, the worlds we see on stage are urban centric, so it was wonderful to see a play that walked through so much of the politics of factory working and blue color circles, and I would love to see more of it. I hope in the future Slurry is given the chance for a longer run time for additional character development. There is something really great here, it just needs some more room to breathe (pun intended).
[Edit 7/28/18: Some script inconsistencies that were mentioned were Sherry’s mentioned but unexplained foot injury. It was relayed after publication that this was an attempt to cover the actress’s limp from a broken foot. That script critique was removed.]
The Wandering Playwright 