NEWBURYPORT — Should a playwright expose his own marriage issues onstage?
North Shore humor columnist Doug Brendel took a chance and did it — for laughs.
Now his daughter, theater professional Lydia Charlotte Brendel, is directing her father’s new comedy, Things Get Ugly, at the Firehouse Center for the Arts in Newburyport.
“My wife Kristina read the first draft and said, ‘I can’t even comment on this objectively; it’s a transcript of our marriage,’” Brendel said.
But their daughter read it and fell in love with it.
“This play zeroes in on the hilarious communication problems that spouses and partners have all the time,” the director said.
The younger Brendel launched a series of workshops to refine the script and heighten the comedy, and produced a free public staged reading with an audience talkback.
Brendel took all the feedback, revised the script, and finally turned it back over to his daughter.
“It’s hers now,” he said. “Casting, staging, directing. I’m just hoping for the best — theatrically and maritally.”
According to early reviews, Things Get Ugly features “banter sparkling with Noel Coward-style wit … playful in form and daring in content … a bracing look at beauty, betrayal, and the bargains couples make to stay together.”
The play, starring beloved New England actors Justin Demers and Tara Johns, finds a married couple, professional actors, cast in the same show. In the theatre’s dressing room, we watch as one dons a grotesquely ugly costume and hideous makeup to become a troll, while the other becomes fabulously beautiful.
In a challenging twist, the real-life actors will swap roles with each performance.
But the couple’s clever banter reveals trouble under the surface … and then — out slips a whopper of a secret.
Throwing her hands in the air, the playwright’s wife, Kristina said, “you marry a writer, this is the risk you take.”
Brendel, an Ipswich resident, shares his perspective and wit at Outsidah.com and with readers at The Salem News, a North of Boston Media Group publication. He can be contacted at Unconventional@DougBrendel.com.