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Playhouse’s Moyer Room catches ‘Flu’

Will Eno's "The Flu Season" opens for a two-weekend run at Youngstown Playhouse's Moyer Room.

Or is it "A Snow Romance"?

That's how the play within a play initially is introduced by Prologue, but Epilogue has very different ideas about how the story should play out.

The result is a play that is very meta, very experimental and, according to director Pat Foltz, very funny.

"I'm a huge Eno fan," Foltz said. "I've wanted to do his play called 'Middletown,' which is sort of an updated, zany 'Our Town' for five years, but I can't find the right venue. It's too big for the Moyer Room, but it's not a mainstage show. I was reading his other plays and 'Flu Season' just kind of hit me as very funny."

But it also is a certain kind of funny. Foltz likened it to the production of "Waiting for Godot" that starred Robin Williams and Steve Martin or the sly comedic tone of "The Twilight Zone." At another point, she compared it to the work of German playwright Bertolt Brecht.

In other words, it's not Neil Simon and it's not a door-slamming farce.

"The Flu Season" takes place in a mental institution, where two patients -- simply referred to as The Man (Adam Dominick) and The Woman (Nailah Thomas) -- may or may not become a couple. There are also are potential sparks between The Doctor (James Hain) and The Nurse (Jeanine Rees), who don't seem much more stable than the people they treat.

Then again, the real setting may be inside the playwright's head, where the Prologue (Matthew Mazuroski) tries to craft a love story while Epilogue (Eric Kibler) points out his many flaws. The two characters frequently freeze and interrupt the action on stage.

"Prologue is an optimist, writing this wonderful prose, and Epilogue is coming up behind him, 'That's too precious. That's stupid,'" Foltz said.

The director said this was a play that she went into with less of a vision for how she wanted it done. Instead, she wanted to give the actors the opportunity to find their characters' voices.

"I really wanted them to find out what the play was about, and it was fun watching them bring something to it that I might not have even dreamt of," she said. "Each of these actors have found that at various points in the rehearsals. They found who the character is in relation to the other characters and the Prologue and Epilogue … For me as the director, it's been a matter of don't force your beliefs on the show. Let the characters find it, and that they have."

For a non-traditional experimental show, Foltz and Mazuroski took an equally experimental approach to the set, which she described as a merry-go-round -- "the kind of dangerous ones from back in '50s that threw you off."

Foltz said she realizes "The Flu Season" might not be everyone's idea of a fun night out at the theater, but she said there was a "collection of oddballs that really wanted to do this show," and she believes there's also an audience that wants to see something more than a rom-com with a happy ending.

"It's what the Moyer Room should be," Foltz said. "The big musicals are upstairs, but there still has to be a place where we go, 'Let's try something for people who like to play with words and play with plays, and let try something different.'"