Shooting Star

Gratuitous Violins rating *** out of ****
In Shooting Star, a man and a woman meet by chance at an airport more than 20 years after their relationship ended. What might have been a quick hello turns into something more than that when a snowstorm cancels all flights.

Playwright Steven Deitz has written a bittersweet look at two very different people who were once in love, then their relationship fell apart. Now, they have an unexpected chance to catch up with everything that implies: the fond memories, the blame, the regrets.

Reed McAllister and Elena Carson are portrayed in this two-hander by husband and wife actors Kurt Rhoads and Nance Williamson. The Trinity Repertory Company production is their 55th play together. (They've acted at Trinity Rep in the past and they're also veterans of New York's Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival.)

The way Dietz has created this pair, it's a bit hard to imagine how they hooked up as students at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

McAllister is the conservative businessman in suit and tie; Carson, the free-spirited liberal in a peasant skirt. And you get the impression they were much the same back in the day. But I guess opposites really do attract.

The set design by Patrick Lynch is very effective: a couple rows of metal seats, electronic boards announcing flight delays, big floor-to-ceiling windows that let the audience see the snow falling gently outside.

This is my first time seeing a play by Dietz, whose works are a mainstay of regional theatre companies. He definitely has a way with the clever one-liners. There's some pointed, witty red state/blue state jabs and a reference to National Public Radio pledge drives that got big laughs.

Rhoads and Williamson, directed by Fred Sullivan Jr., do a great job of taking what could be caricatures and making them seem like people you might know. These are two people who have been beaten down a bit by life and it shows. Williamson especially is terrific in the flashier, funnier of the two roles.

But the play is much more than a jokey reunion between the kooky liberal and uptight conservative. Dietz explores the pain and sadness that's occurred in both of their lives, the pent-up anger over slights that never got resolved, the disappointment at the way things have turned out.

There are some unexpected twists in the story and I have to give Dietz credit for bringing up a subject that could make some theatergoers uncomfortable. He does it in a way that I think is very sensitive and credible.

Shooting Star isn't the kind of play that wraps things up in a neat package, and I liked that.

Playwright Steven Dietz, for beginners

When Trinity Repertory Company announced its 2009-2010 season and I saw that a play by Steven Dietz was included my first reaction was, "Who?"

And that surprised me, because even though I haven't been a regular theatergoer for that long, I like to think that I recognize the names of most well-known playwrights.

Previews begin tonight at Trinity Rep for his romantic comedy Shooting Star. It features Kurt Rhoads and Nance Williamson, a real-life married couple, portraying two former lovers who meet unexpectedly in a snowbound airport. The play runs through Nov. 22.

And despite my ignorance, Dietz is a prolific playwright. Shooting Star, from 2008, is his 31st play to be produced. This article calls him "arguably one of the most widely produced living playwrights in the country" and notes that his "well-made plays - tight and polished" are suited to regional theatre.

He's been able to earn a living doing something he loves, no small feat for a playwright:

"I've never written a hit play. I've never written a masterpiece. And when colleagues of mine had those moments, oh, man am I envious," he says with a chortle and a wide smile. "But the flip side of all that is that I have a career (as a playwright). The art form and the deadline business of the art form has let me - or forced me - to write a lot of plays."

Among his most produced plays are Lonely Planet, about the AIDS epidemic, and God's Country, about the role of a white supremacist group in the murder of Denver talk-show host Alan Berg. He's also written plays about Sherlock Holmes (Love to see that one!) and Dracula (No thanks!)

Dietz, 51, grew up in Denver and graduated from the University of Northern Colorado. He moved to Minneapolis after college, where he honed his craft at the Playwrights' Center. From 1991 to 2006 he was based in Seattle, and now divides his time between there and Austin, Texas, where he teaches at the University of Texas.

In 2004, he talked to Playbill about the virtues of not being a New York-based writer:

"As much as I wanted my early plays to have a big New York success, the very fact that they didn't — or more importantly, didn't go to New York and get hammered — meant that I got to write my next play, and my next play. So I feel like I've had this 20-year apprenticeship. I've gotten to learn my craft."

Dietz is also familiar to readers of American Theatre magazine, which published his Audience Manifesto. It says, in part:

"Tell your theatre that you're ready for anything, and that you plan to let them know exactly what you think of it, good or bad. Getting your money's worth is not good enough. Get your heart and mind's worth. As artists and audiences, together we share the theatre. Together we share this grand, eloquent, messy, unpredictable experiment. Let's revel in that."

I especially like that line about getting your money's worth isn't enough. He's right, it's about getting your heart's and mind's worth. It's about something that makes you think or moves you. Hopefully, it does both.