There’s something ineffably sweet about “The Fall Show,” the Charles Mee and Erika Chong Shuch co-creation now premiering at Shotgun Players at the Ashby Stage in Berkeley. It’s tender even when some among the dancerly chorus are screaming and throwing plates and slamming doors in a full-out, cathartic rage.
The couple at the center of the play — an affable but slightly defensive man named Sam (Reginald Wilkins) and a grumpy, short-tempered woman named Eddie (Beth Wilmurt) — meet by chance on a park bench. They quarrel and shout their way through the awkward beginnings of a love affair.
Even if audiences don’t understand much of what’s going on, it’s always apparent that the play is about love and all the frustration, despair and anxiety that goes along with it.
“The Fall Show” is a collaborative production, with Mee providing a script in the form of stage directions and local director/choreographer Shuch working with the performers to shape the piece. Shuch maintained contact with Mee, who lives in New York, via text. Shuch also added some stage directions from some of Mee’s plays including “First Love.”
It’s an eclectic mix of two-character interaction and emotional struggle. The couple is not young. Mee himself is 87.
“Perhaps you would think of coming home with me,” Eddie offers tentatively after she and Sam have worked out how to share the park bench and exchanged fragments of a meandering conversation.
“I wonder where my kids are,” he muses.
“We all have a history,” she says.
The “Fall” in the title is represented by piles of autumn leaves everywhere (Mikiko Uesugi, scenic designer), and by a stark, symbolic tree which remains stoic, unmoved by the human chaos that surrounds it.
Throughout, the seven performers who comprise the ensemble enter, depart and re-enter. They sing and dance in a variety of ever-changing costumes, starting as a merry band in Magritte-like bowlers, suit jackets, and ties (costumes by Ashley Renee).
The action is accompanied by buoyant recorded classical music (Wilmurt herself is the music director), occasionally an onstage pianist, and even an oddball mix of songs like a clever medley of “Ring of Fire” and “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire.”
The chorus members, too, are finding one another, falling in love.
Mee’s plays mostly feel like life: a cluster of words and two people experimenting with love, featuring non-sequiturs, comfort, joy, rage and music.
Shotgun Players’ “The Fall Show” continues through Oct. 25 at Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. Tickets are $23 to $80 at shotgunplayers.org