The Marriage Counselor by Joey Ouellette March/April 2004 When a volatile young couple mistake a hapless traveling vacuum cleaner salesman for their marriage counselor, the stage is set for a truly hilarious evening. An unrelenting flood of ex-wives, old flames, lovers, long-closeted skeletons, an amorous delivery man, and a psycho with a gun, prevent the poor salesman from making his escape. This won't be a stereotypical visit to the marriage counselor. SCROLL DOWN TO SEE PICS- Some are promotional photographs (where lighting was good and cast members usually stood still) ..... AND some are fun live action stage shots (where lighting was too bright and the cast wiggled a lot---sorry).

The Marriage Counselor Poster

Chaos

by Jeff Roby

The Marriage Counselor was our third production, and by this time you'd think we would have a formula established to make things easy to set-up and manage. You WOULD think so, wouldn't you? But NOOOOOO......

It was chaos in the first degree, both on stage and off.

At first glance I thought this was a rehearsal picture, but actually it may have been the argument that resulted from Nikki's home-baked cookies disappearing from the table.

(By the way, this is JEFF writing here. Scott wrote the first two "story behind the play" journal entries, and he got to take some stabs at moi. So I volunteered...well, actually THREATENED...to be allowed to author this journal entry because only I can give you the true overall picture and fair account. Mainly because Scott ended up not liking this production very well. That's because he cast himself as a main character with a LOT of lines and the responsbility of keeping an entertaining pace. Well, he and NIKKI HUNTER were both in the hot seat here and a few times the pace lagged, lines were misplaced .... oh hell lines were airlifted out, not merely overlooked. And they had the uncomfortable position of trying to accomplish physical comic action with a character who never spoke a word -- I'll get into that in a minute.

Here is Nikki and Scott arguing with Ray caught in the middle. That white blurr in the center of the frame is her fast-moving hand about to make contact with Ray's chops.

Plus, being actual mates in life, Scott and Nikki probably feared the possibility of the stage argument veering off into a real personal argument that may have started in their personal life. Mister CONTROL FREAK is not one to shake his dirty laundry in a public forum, unless it's REALLY funny and all hope is lost (see RABBI production).)

Left: Battle of women-toting guys. Right: Scott doing the gentlemanly thing.....sorta.

So anyway, HE and SHE were the main characters with all the responsiblity and pressure. I managed the tech booth operations (with the help of excellent firstmate, Jeremy Snoke) and then in the last scene when the audience was warming up their pitching arms and searching purses for rotten fruit, I would LUNGE onto the set playing the character Brian -- psycho with a gun. Often, the show flowed well up to this point and the audience laughed and appeared to be having a good time. So my psychotic entrance just added to the fun. Other times when I landed on the set I saw the panic of a "save this sinking ship" look on Scott's face. Nikki never panics, she just hurls objects at Scott (kind of like a vice president on a hunting trip).

Nikki swinging the vacuum hose at the object of her dysfunction.

At this point, the cast all did crazy physical things like piling up on top of my aching back (human pyramid of sorts), punching, kicking, screaming, trying to burn Scott at the stake (not as successful as we would have liked), stepping on the unconscious vacuum salesman (Ray probably still has my boot print impressed on his sternum), and shooting at each other until order was restored and the nice happy ending emerged (following a horrific rendition of a Karen Carpenter song -- which I can't name because of the pending lawsuit -- hey, even DEAD celebrities have good attorneys).

Left to right: Rudolpho (Michael Chowning) sweeping Susan (Nikki Hunter) off her feet; standing on a chair, Brian (Jeff Roby), is the psycho with a gun threatening everybody; Vacuum Salesman (Ray Snoke) demonstrating his sucking power on Kate's hair (Valerie Imler); Tiger (Scott Culpepper) being lovingly strangled by Jeanine (Katie Tierney). Only the vacuum cleaner had an actual agent.

Okay, enough Scott-bashing. Now the praise....

This was the second Milk Building show for MICHAEL CHOWNING and he soared through in his polished charming way (if you ever have the chance to see him headline a musical, GO...). He brought the suave exotic character of Rudolpho (of unspecified European birthing) to life in this surreal story of relationships. Rudolpho is a UPS (or IPS I believe is what we called it to avoid lawsuit number two) delivery person with a sordid past and uncanny way of getting involved with every female he passes. The word "smarmy" was probably coined from guys like this. His handprint was on everyone's bottom. EVERYONES! Everything he said could be twisted into a perverted sexual connotation (and it did). We all tend to identify favorite lines from each other's dialogue, but I think it would be unnanimous to say that his most notorious line was the first thing he said upon entering the set (or warzone as it came to be called):

"EXCUSE ME, I HAVE A LARGE PACKAGE ---"  ('nuff said.)

All the girls love Rudolpho, here proving he has enough "large packages" to go around. (Left to right: Katie Tierney, Nikki Hunter, Michael Chowning, Valerie Imler)

Michael with his package, post-swing which sent Scott crashing to the floor

Following his capture, the next IPS delivery person to arrive was in the form of the vivacious VALERIE IMLER (in her first ...and subsequent LAST... casting at the Milk Building; not because we didn't want her back, but after witnessing our bizarre tirade numerous times, her husband insisted she get pregnant and stay home. Rudolpho volunteered......but that's another lawsuit we can't discuss.  Anyway, Valerie's sweet innocent little-girl voice and super-model stature was the perfect addition to this strange tale. I think she wanted to be as bizarre as the rest of us, be we convinced her that her normalcy was the counterbalance needed to keep this performance in it's surreal atmosphere.

 Ray, Valerie, and the box that never got delivered.

Another first-timer/last-timer was the cute petite KATIE TIERNEY who, once she got over her nervous jitters, provided the biting vicious tone that we all desperately wanted, to keep Scott hopping madly just out of disaster's reach.

Left: Katie grabbing Scott by the t-shirt to toss his a$* out. Right: Nikki and Katie responding to one of Scott's absurd excuses.

Katie's character, Jeanine, was the younger sister of Nikki's character, Susan, Scott's wife (character wife...stay with me - don't get confused).

All paused in a moment of reflection....her sister's husband's...lover...wait--

Katie, as Jeanine, had a bone to pick because Tiger, Scott's character (and don't get me started on THAT name) had dated her before marrying Susan, Nikki's character. The sisters continued their competitive nature, even though in the long run, neither one of them really wanted the cad anyway (who did?).

After surviving this production, Katie decided to move away. Far away. Back to east coast civilization. I'm sure she tells haunting morbid tales about us at New York cocktail parties with high-class socialites who only suspect that creatures like us really exist, out here in the perverted heartland.

Quick, look like Charlie's Angels...............or Motley Crew.

That brings us down to the white elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about.....RAY SNOKE. No, I joke, and he does too, about being a big guy. A big guy with a heart of gold.....and stupid enough to let us jump on him and drag around a set in an ill-fitting suit and ridiculus toupee.

Assorted situations abusing Ray with slaps, strangulation, nose smacks, etc.

Ray was game for whatever dangerous situation the insane Director, Scott, designed. We slapped him, punched him, sat on him, stepped on his chest (well that just me who did that) and he stayed true to form. What a trouper. Turns out, the hardest part of this production for him was STAYING SILENT. If you know Ray, he can talk nonstop for weeks at a time. But he kept his word, enduring the physical torture, and didn't make a peep. 'Til the curtain went down....

Just when a happy ending was in sight, Michael (still skirted) boxes me in the head.

Nikki finally gets the gun and does her best Angel's pose, while Scott pulls Katie from her pummeling of me (Valerie is still confused and Ray is still hiding behind the chairs).

Time for the class picture!