On Saturday night I saw “Lucky Me” at Theatre Tallahassee. I dutifully got up Sunday morning and spent over an hour typing the report into my laptop but when I went to copy it to an e-mail it all disappeared. Ugh!!! Since that put me in such a wonderful frame of mind (sarcasm intended) I decided to . . . . But first things first:

When I first started going to this theater, it called itself “Tallahassee Little Theater”. Then it dropped the “Little”. Two years ago the name was “Theatre Tallahassee” (notice the ‘re’). Some time back they undertook a major renovation to the main theater: New seats, made major changes to the stage and updated the tech. They also turned the existing lobby into a “Coffeehouse Theater” and built a new lobby for the main stage on the other end of the building. They have raised over $1,400,000 of a $1,500,000 goal and are nearing completion of the renovation.

I haven’t seen a show in the main theater since the renovation. Both shows I’ve seen recently (“Vanya, Sonia, Masha and Spike” and “Lucky Me”) were in the coffeehouse theater. It’s a strange stage: The only access to the stage is through the audience. The stage is a little less than the width of the room, it is raised 16 inches off the floor and is less than 10 feet front to back. For both plays I’ve seen there recently, they have built a small room on the stage for actors to hide in when they are not on stage. For Lucky Me, it was a combination hall to the bathroom and bedroom and had a door that served as the front door. It worked.

There were 100 stacking chairs to sit on – arranged in ten rows of ten chairs. The first row was right up against the stage.

Lucky Me was well directed and well acted but not a great play. The play is a RomCom about a young woman who lives with her blind, crotchety father and has chronic bad luck. Her light bulbs keep burning out, she keeps injuring herself and so on. As the play opens she has fallen off the roof and broken her foot and is helped in by a nice young man who works for TSA (the airport security people). The TSA is always good for a laugh. They did a good job blocking it – I never felt that the stage was cramped considering how small it is – particularly front to back. The upstage wall is right against the outside wall of the building.

The play had a cast of four – the three mentioned plus Yuri the Russian Building Supt who is only in Act II. He was always funny. One of those actors who takes a small part and makes something special out of it.

The play was light and fun but didn’t interest me enough to do it.