[NEohioPAL] Review of Cleveland Play House's "Tiny Houses"

[Bob Abelman]

Good things come in the small package that is Cleveland Play House’s ‘Tiny Houses’ 



Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

  

Chelsea Marcantel’s romantic comedy “Tiny Houses,” which is getting its World Premiere at Cleveland Play House, opens with a flatbed trailer on a patch of browning turf at the center of the Outcalt Theatre’s performance space.  



On this spot, over the course of the next 100 minutes, a 200-square-foot pre-fab “tiny house” – whose physical minimalism is a 21th century expression of a simpler, less materialistic lifestyle made popular by Henry David Thoreau during the 19th century – will be painstakingly constructed.  All the while, the relationships of the 20-somethings building it will undergo dramatic deconstruction and a radical reassembly involving a combination of different but better fitting pieces and parts.



Each of the idiosyncratic characters in this play is on a quest to find a place to call home and someone to share it with, which makes them immediately endearing and their journey absolutely engaging.  And, much like Thoreau, they find meaning in stripping away the unessential albeit nothing as transcendental. 



But there is an artificiality in the character’s exchanges that keeps the one-act “Tiny Houses” from being a great play, supporting the adage that good things come in small packages.



For more of this article, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/bob_abelman/
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