In the opening scene of Central Works longtime playwright Patricia Milton’s latest light comedy, “After Happy,” oil company owner Brenda (Jan Zvaifler in a silky kimono and bedroom slippers) is pacing fretfully because the company-sponsored community event, the upcoming pirate festival, has suddenly lost its pirate queen. A replacement must be found.
We’re in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where Hurricane Happy recently wreaked havoc. Back then, Brenda’s climate-change-activist niece, Katherine (an intense and perfectly tuned Lauren Dunagan), left town.
Now she’s back, in debt to her flighty and wealthy auntie for $26,000, and needing something from her, but we’re not sure exactly what it is until the end of the 70-minute play.
We do know that she wants Brenda to turn the family company in a green direction, as she says.
Brenda’s husband is off presumably saving a forest in Liberia while actually scamming its inhabitants. He has over time managed to destroy the oil company’s reputation. But Brenda is in denial, will only admit that the rep is “somewhat tarnished” — after all, her company isn’t a big, important one, just “little baby oil,” so there’s nothing to worry about, she argues, in terms of public and legal threats.
In any case, Brenda, fixated on replacing her pirate queen, seems impervious to any real issues facing the company, not to mention the bigger, central issue: climate change.
So it’s up to Katherine and the fierce friend she’s brought along, Steph (an oddly low-key and low-energy Rezan Asfaw), to make things right.
Milton eventually ties up all the loose ends neatly, but along the way, there’s a surplus of anxious chatter and not as much wit as in some of Milton’s previous comedies.
What’s delightful about Milton’s works in general is that she writes most if not all the characters for women, and many for older women at that.
Central Works, entirely dedicated to new works (this one’s number 79), knows how to stage a play in one room of the charming Berkeley City Club: by decorating a single wall with thematically appropriate knick-knacks and artwork and placing only a few key pieces of furniture in the miniscule three-quarters-in-the-round playing area.
And longtime company director and lighting designer Gary Graves knows how to block the actors with just the right amount of movement and with careful attention to audience sightlines.
Still, “After Happy” is overly talky and underly physically active, and the humor doesn’t match the heights of Milton’s “Escape from the Asylum” in 2022 and “Accused!” in 2024.
Standing by for world premiere number 80 …
Central Works’ “After Happy” continues through March 29 at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., Berkeley. Tickets are $35 to $45 at centralworks.org.
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