When nineteen year old Libby Tucker arrives from her home in Brooklyn, unannounced and uninvited, on her father's Hollywood doorstep, she claims she is there to advance her show business career. Her desire to be in the movies is the excuse she gives dad, a man she has not seen or heard from in sixteen years.
Only Neil Simon could conjure up this bittersweet comedy "I Ought to be in Pictures," and only the Ivoryton Playhouse could provide it such a promising production until Sunday, May 11.
The father-daughter dynamics fuel this family interaction/confrontation. Libby is refreshingly candid, spunky and endearing in the hands of Siobhan Fitzgerald. She wears her heart on the sleeve of her camouflage jacket even as she tries to hide her vulnerability. Her dad, Herb, is a screenwriter who hasn't made it big YET. He has three failed marriages to his credit and is struggling to make it on all fronts.
Mike Boland is appropriately shocked by Libby's sudden appearance in his life. With sheepish humor, he tries to justify his past actions and defend his decisions. Libby will have none of that nonsense. He owes her, and owes her in spades, and now is the day of reckoning. She is the steam roller and he is the freshly paved road. His good care in nurturing a lemon and an orange tree do not equal his blatant abandonment of his wife, son and daughter more than a decade and a half ago.
Playing referee in the family squabble is Steffy, a sweet and forgiving Jeanie Rapp, who quietly tries to make everything neat and tied up with a bow. Is Herb able to help his long lost daughter? Can all three of them discover their heart's desire? Director R. Bruce Connelly makes us care a great deal about this human triangle and root for the long promised happy ending.
For tickets ($42, seniors $37, students $20, children $15), call the Ivoryton Playhouse, 103 Main Street, Ivoryton at 860-767-7318 or online at
www.ivorytonplayhouse.org. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., with matinees Wednesday and Sunday at 2 p.m.
Come meet Libby and cheer her on in her quests to find her dad, to discover why he left, to learn if he loves her and, just maybe, to make it in the movies.
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