New comedy penned by Meramec professor centers on quirky St. Louis familyBY : WILL MURRY
Art & Life
Meramec’s theater season kicked off the spring semester with a theme appropriate for its Valentine’s Day release date; what defines love?
‘The Piddlings’ is a play written and produced by Meramec English-professor-turned-playwright Pamela Garvey. Garvey penned the piece after a request from theater professor Keith Oliver last winter.
Oliver specifically requested a play with ‘quirky-eccentric’ characters, comedy, domestic scenes, no more than eight characters and no political agenda. Garvey then requested and received a grant from the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission and got to work.
“To write a play you need a premise to start with. Knowing that I needed a domestic scene, something quirky and comic, what I figured would be a good premise would be a family of characters, eccentric in their own ways,” said Garvey.
The play is set in modern day St. Louis and stars Madeline Piddling, a girl trying to introduce her boyfriend to her family without being utterly embarrassed by them.
“[Madeline] is most embarrassed by her family, so she spends a lot of her time with her boyfriend around his family because they think she’s the best thing since sliced bread,” said Garvey. “But in reality, his family is weirder than hers. She just can’t see it because she’s blinded by love.”
The cast is a mix of alumni, current STLCC students and outsourced actors. Scarlett O’Shaughnessy, current UMSL attendee and Meramec alumnus, plays Madeline Piddling.
“I like the dinner scene a lot. It’s when the boyfriend finally meets the family which is kind of what the whole play is leading up to,” said O’Shaughnessy. “All the excitement really explodes in that scene.”
The arrival of boyfriend Joseph Eagleton, played by Meramec alumnus Kalen Riley, is highly anticipated but not actually given any major screen time until the dinner scene.
“He’s talked about for most of the show until he shows up in the last twenty five minutes, which I find absolutely hilarious,” said Riley “He’s kind of hyped up the whole show by his girlfriend because she thinks that he and his family are perfect, but it comes out later that none of that is true.”
Pamela Garvey has authored several books and poems. Her upcoming poetry compilation, ‘7 Miles Deep’ will be out Mar. 17. ‘The Piddlings’ premiered Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018 and ran until Sunday, Feb. 18.
‘The Piddlings’ is the third Meramec theater production of the 2017-2018 season. The final presentation will be the musical ‘Avenue Q’ which will premier in April.
