Steadstyle Chicago
	February 2010 Theatre Review by Joe Stead
	More Fun than Bowling Jake Tomlinson loves two things in life, women and bowling.  He's also paranoid that someone out there may be trying to kill him.  Given the relationships in his life, it's hard to blame the guy and his fears may have some validity.  His first wife Maggie just up and walked out one day leaving Jake to raise their ten-year-old daughter Molly alone.  Jake eventually met, fell in love and married Lois, who was killed in a tragic accident.  He barely had time to grieve when he married Loretta, Lois' best friend who also met an untimely fate.  And now a mysterious figure in black is lurking behind the tree with orders to pursue Jake.  "Whoever knows things is trying to kill me," Jake declares, but he's not giving up without a fight. Steven Dietz's gentle comedy "More Fun than Bowling" has a decidedly dark streak running through it.  Its message is that life is never a sure thing and we need to enjoy and appreciate everything and every moment we are given.  That is certainly a worthy sentiment, and Dietz has constructed a quirky and unconventional way of laughing at those gutter balls life often deals us.  We can sympathize with Jake's fears as he prepares a "test run" for his own death by submerging himself in the ground.  He is sure he will soon be meeting his two late wives on the other side of the great beyond, so better be prepared. Lois and Loretta now rest on opposite sides of a hill overlooking a small mid-western town called Turtle Rapids.  Jake's teenaged daughter Molly lovingly marks their graves with bowling pins even though Jake has long forgotten which is which.  Molly snickers he could just dig them up to find out, to which he replies "We are family members, not archaeologists".  The comedy plays fast and loose with time as we get to meet both Lois and Loretta and find that Jake's heart really was big enough to hold them all.  As a letter from wife number one reveals at one point, Jake may not have been the easiest person in the world to live with, but he was always fun.  The owner of a bowling alley, Jake explains the game of bowling as a metaphor for life and death.  "Amateurs don't understand the stakes," he bellows.  You have to see the ball as death, and you gotta roll the ball with a mission.  "You gotta be ruthless and clever". And what of that mysterious figure, who introduces himself to us as Mr. Dyson?  What are his intentions and who is he really?  An angel of death, a hired hit man, a bowler with a vendetta?  I will leave that part of the play to the audience to find out, although I will tell you this is not simply a re-working of "Death Takes a Holiday" or "On Borrowed Time".  Dietz makes his points that "life is a shell game so you gotta pay attention," and he does it in a funny sort of magical realism way.  In the current Grove Players production, Director Marilyn Ludwig plays it fairly straight-forward with little help from the blasé set and uninspired lighting design to help her.  Surely some of those direct to audience addresses and time lapses would have benefited from some shifts in lighting and sound.  As it is, they're rendered pretty routinely.  Ultimately, it doesn't kill the play, although it doesn't reach its full potential either.  Of the five characters, the ladies playing the two dead wives fare the best.  One can certainly see where Jake would come to care for both Lois and Loretta in Susan O'Byrne and Michelle Olejnik's warm and compassionate performances.  They almost feel like well appointed bookends to keep George McArdle's addled Jake grounded.  McArdle brings a nice nervous energy to the play, although his lines were less than secure on opening night.  Lexy Raines, who alternates as 16-year-old Molly, reminds me of a radiant young Brooke Shields, although her line readings tended to be a bit monotone for my taste.  Sean O'Neill rounds out the cast in a deft performance as Mr. Dyson, whose "mission" provides some laughter as well as suspense.  Grove Players deserve a round of applause for choosing this play, which falls a little outside of the common community theatre fare of British sex farces, Neil Simon comedies and warhorse musicals.  It is worth seeing for Dietz's unexpectedly insightful analogy of life and death.   Grove Players presents "More Fun than Bowling" through February 21, 2010 at Lincoln Center, 935 Maple Avenue in Downers Grove.  The play runs 1 hour 40 minutes with intermission.  Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 8PM and Sundays at 2PM.  Tickets are $14 for adults, with discounts for students and seniors.  Grove Players' spring production will be the romantic comedy "Sabrina Fair" by Samuel Taylor, playing April 23-May 2, 2010.  Visit www.groveplayers.org for more information.   About Joe Stead Joe Stead has enjoyed a lifelong passion for the theatre, which has involved acting, directing, producing, designing and reviewing for the past twenty-five years.  He served as founder, producer and Artistic Director of Curtain Up Productions in Baltimore, Maryland and Four Star Players in Tampa, Florida.  Favorite productions have included "Life With Father," "Deathtrap," "The Odd Couple," "The Miracle Worker," "Brighton Beach Memoirs," "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown" and "Godspell".  He has also performed leading roles in "Fiddler on the Roof," "Pippin," "The Phantom of the Opera," "The Front Page," and most recently as Hucklebee in "The Fantasticks" for Waukegan Community Players.  Joe holds a degree in Commercial Art from Tampa Technical Institute.  As a critic, he has reviewed everything from Broadway to community theatre and major regional theatres throughout the United States including the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey, Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, and the Asolo Theatre in Sarasota, Florida.  Since 1998, he has been a proud resident of Chicago, the greatest theatre city in America.  He served for two years as Theatre Editor for College News and Central Newspapers.  He created the website Steadstyle Chicago in 2000 to showcase the city's outstanding and diverse theatre scene.  Joe was proud to serve alongside a distinguished panel of theatre professionals as a judge for two seasons of Speaking Ring Theatre's "Vitality" Festival of original short plays.  His most fulfilling role, in addition to reviewer and all-around theatre fanatic, was as director of the 2007 production of Peter Shaffer's "Equus" at Actors Workshop (now Redtwist) Theatre, which was nominated for five Joseph Jefferson Award Citations and won for Best Actor (Peter Oyloe).