DCT lends stage to T3’s new show

By Shari Goldstein Stern

Seven evening and matinee performances of Theatre 3’s (T3) “Maytag Virgin” still remain for those who have been told it’s a jaunt of dramedy that shouldn’t be missed. Whitney Latrice Coulter, Dallas artist and Ursuline Academy of Dallas performing arts teacher, skillfully directs. 

This T3 production is staged at Bryant Hall on the Kalita Humphrey Theater  campus. That can be a little confusing. Bryant Hall is home to Second Thought Theatre. The Quadrangle’s renovation affecting T3’s building has no projected completion date. It is noteworthy, though, how Dallas’ theater community has faced the pandemic curtains-up (and head-on), going beyond the traditional cooperation between theaters and companies, into a full-out exchange of venues. 

Artistic Director Jeffrey Schmidt said: “While we desperately miss seeing patrons in our lobby and producing shows on our stages, the past year has shown us that Theatre Three is much more than our building. We can produce great theater regardless of the challenges.”

The playwright, Audrey Cefaly, has roots in Alabama and gains inspiration from the Gulf Coast region. She crafts her dialog to the voices and colorful stories of Southern, working-class people. Cefaly explores the human condition with a darkly comic style. 

The two-actor show features diligent, soulful, honest and lonely singles. Lizzy was widowed within the past year. Tiffany Solano, as Lizzy, is an established teacher at the small town’s high school. She has enough background in the town and at the school that she knows what’s-what and who’s-who. 

Lizzy lives in a tiny-town looking tiny-house, with the requisite porch decorated with bright flowers, an iguana and an upside-down bottle tree. Schmidt’s set design conveys the homey, small-town, warm atmosphere one might expect of this community.

The young widow is an Alabama school teacher who develops a friendship with her new neighbor Jack, played by Ian Ferguson. Jack also lives in a tiny-town looking tiny-house, with the requisite porch, but his porch is decorated with a Maytag dryer and a cooler of moonshine.

Both (pictured above) form a bond, after arduous work on Lizzy’s part, over their mutual teaching careers, the death of her spouse and the life that comes after while drinking from that cooler. 

Solano is more than convincing as the grieving, confused, angry-at-the-world widow who presents herself as the wronged victim. She entertains the audience with a full-out range of emotion. She’s sweet, bitchy, gentle, rude, lovely, a witch, warm and self-centered. Solano has been a member of the Dallas Theater Center’s (DTC) Diane and Hal Brierley Resident Acting Company since 2018. 

Ferguson, as Jack, is a talented musician and actor who has appeared on Dallas and area stages since 2010. 

On the downside, the script is spectacularly wordy. True, it is a two-person show with Jeffrey Schmidt’s artfully designed cute little houses with porches on which all the action takes place. But the entire play could have been cut by two scenes. 

For tickets and information, call the T3 Box office at 214-871-3300.