Ayckbourn is perhaps the most produced living English language playwright. But his work is not done much around here. Ed Shea, of Warren's 2nd Story Theater, plans to change that.

Shea and company are staging Ayckbourn's "Comic Potential," the playwright's look at what it means to be human. The show opens in previews Friday.

"Comic Potential" is set in the nebulous future, during a time when actors have been replaced by actoids, or robots, who have been programmed to produce certain emotions. It takes place at first on a sound stage where the most banal of soap operas is being shot. Enter Adam, who is interested in writing comedy, and wants to pick the brain of the show's once-respected director, who is now washed up.

Although warned against it, Adam soon falls for Jacie, one of the actoids who has malfunctioned and begins to feel emotions on her own, who laughs spontaneously. A relationship develops and Adam begins teaching Jacie how to become human, sort of like a futuristic "Pygmalion." When it becomes time for Adam to teach the robot how to read, they find themselves in a hotel room with only a Bible on hand. So Jacie, who is undergoing her own creation, sits down to read about The Creation in Genesis.

"It's a little like Pinocchio," said Shea.

Shea, who normally speaks volumes about the plays he's directing, was somewhat at a loss for words when discussing "Comic Potential." He said it's a "big" play, with "big ideas." He called it "epic" and had a hard time gaining an analytical foothold.

But he did say it's a love story and a satire on TV and mass media. It's also a study in comedy, what it is that makes things funny. At one point, said Shea, Adam teaches Jacie how to do a double-take. But when she tries out what she has learned she does so at a totally inappropriate moment.

Ayckbourn, who is British, is the author of 73 full-length plays, 10 of which have made it to Broadway or off-Broadway. He is perhaps best known for "The Norman Conquests," which was on Broadway not long ago.

Ayckbourn left school at 17 to strike out on a career in theater, and a job as a stage manager soon followed. Eventually he ended up at the Library Theatre in Scarborough, where he would become artistic director and stage most of his plays.

Ayckbourn has also been an actor, and since 1967 has directed the premieres of all his plays.

The Library Theatre was the UK's first professional theater in the round. And Ayckbourn's plays have all been designed for that format. Shea, in fact, was thinking of changing his in-the-round set up for the show, because he needed to depict several locations. But something kept pulling him back to the round, he said. He thinks it's because that's the way Ayckbourn staged the show.

As in the past, Shea will be using just the bare minimum of props, so as not to be heavy-handed. He likes the language of the playwright to shine forth and considers too much staging a potential distraction.

"Comic Potential," the latest offering from Warren's 2nd Story Theatre, is playwright Alan Ayckbourn's examination of the age-old question of what makes us human.

It's a Pygmalion-esque tale about a wannabe screenwriter who falls in love with an "actoid," a robot who stars in a tawdry soap opera as a nurse. And under the sure-footed direction of Ed Shea, it's as funny as it is clever.

Ayckbourn is the prolific British playwright who just happens not to be produced around here too much. This is Shea's first encounter with the writer, but it is obvious he is taken by the script. The whole show just sizzles, thanks, in part, to some solid acting from the likes of Laura Sorensen as the robotic nurse, Jacie, and Dillon Medina as her suitor, Adam.

Sorensen manages to skirt that fine line between android-like affect and a glimmer of human awareness. When Adam, who has begun to fall in love with Jacie, takes her out to dinner, Jacie is asked to pick out a dress. She shows up in a garment bag.

The problem is, she has malfunctioned; she no longer responds to her programmers. She laughs spontaneously in the middle of her lines, and it soon becomes clear that this is an android with a mind of her own and a sense of humor. It is at this point that Ayckbourn begins to dissect what it is that makes us laugh. Adam teaches Jacie to do a double take, something she masters quickly but uses at the most inappropriate of times.

Adam and Jacie hit it off, even though he is warned against fraternizing with the actoids. And they end up running off to a hotel, where he teaches her to read Genesis from a Bible.

Ayckbourn toys with a lot of interesting ideas in his play. At one point it is explained that Jacie can only spout lines from past TV shows. That is, all she can do is dip into her memory banks and regurgitate things she has said in the past. But isn't that what we all do, asks Adam.

In moments, there are a lot of comic bits, one being the scene in which Jacie and Adam are dining out at a fancy restaurant and an alarm signals that Jacie needs emptying. At that point, in front of other diners, Adam crawls under the table and up under Jacie's dress, as she shrieks with apparent pleasure.

Again, Sorensen is terrific as Jacie, someone who is in a sort of gestational netherworld. And she has some virtuosic lines, when she has to explain to a hotel clerk why she and Adam have no luggage. For several minutes she spins out a tale of intrigue and murder from an old cop series she once appeared in.

As always, John Michael Richardson added a welcomed sparkle to the production as Chance, the director of the soap opera Jacie is in. He was once a noted comic director who has now sunk to directing robots.

And Bob Colonna was a hoot as Lester, the owner of the television studio and uncle to Medina's Adam. Since this is all taking place in the future, Lester communicates by transmitting his thoughts through a go-between.

Lynne Collinson was perfectly snarky as Carla, the TV studio's regional director, and Medina managed to make Adam seen totally believable.

"Comic Potential" comes recommended. It's a chance to see, perhaps for the first time, the work of a real craftsman of a playwright, and a chance to chew over some intriguing ideas while getting in a couple of good laughs.

Comic Potential is Alan Ayckbourn's take on television of the future where actors are not actors at all, but machines. Given the success of James Cameron's Avatar, Ayckbourn might be on to something.

The heroine of the story is Jacie (Laura Sorensen), a perpetually 24-year old "act-oid" who is currently working on the set of a low-budget daytime hospital-based soap opera. The soap is "directed" by Chandler Tate (John Michael Richardson), a has-been director who is so old-fashioned that he remembers what it was like to work with human actors. The actoids on the soap opera set speak only the lines that are fed to them electronically by Trudi (Susie Bowen Powers) and Prim (Juli Parker), their technicians.

The show one of a stable of low-quality, money-making daytime television shows that are looked after by television executive Carla Pepperbloom (Lynne Collinson). Carla, at every turn reminds us that actoids, like all machines, are supposed to do what we want them to do, when we want them to do it. They are not to have independent thought or actions. They are certainly not supposed to understand something as complex as "comedy".

That thinking is put to a test by Adam (Dillon Medina), an aspiring director, who by luck of his birth is also the nephew of the Chairman of the Board, Lester (Bob Colonna) who owns the corporate conglomerate which owns the network which owns the soap opera. While teaching Jacie some basic Buster Keaton double-takes, Adam discovers that Jacie has assimilated all of the dialogue of all of the roles she has played and her circuitry has created something quite similar to a personality. The teacher and the student, predictably, fall in love.

Adam and Jacie, with the help of Chance, Trudie and Prim, try to convince Carla that Jacie's personality is more than just faulty circuitry and that Jacie can handle more complex roles, with complex emotions...that she is, almost, human. Carla's world view does not include machines that think for themselves and she wants Jacie's program melted down.

The lovers flee. The lovers are found. Jacie's extraordinary talent is recognized by Lester and she is given the high-powered programming job previously held by Carla. As Jacie becomes more human, flush with power, she begins to lose her humanity.

Laura Sorensen, as Jacie, has most complex role, which she handles effortlessly. Under Shea's direction and in Sorensen's capable hands, Jacie's transformation seems entirely plausible. Dillon Medina gives a fine performance as Adam, the young, naïve, aspiring director. The pair has no problem executing the vaudevillian, physical, comedy.

Their characters bitter rivals; John Michael Richardson and Lynne Collinson are marvelously entertaining in their respective roles. Richardson gets to be as boozy and blousy as Collinson is stone-faced and un-movable. Their characters say the most vile, outrageous, things to each other, and the actors seem to be having a great time.

Susie Bowen Powers and Juli Parker are perfectly understated as the bureaucratic technicians who welcome the interruption to their daily life.

Bob Colonna needn't stretch much for his role as Lester, but does a fine job. Vince Petronio and Paula Faber are chameleons, each taking many different small characters in the play. Kevin Broccoli rounds out the cast of fine performances.

Ed Shea has directed a tight production of Alan Ayckbourn's satiric social commentary. Comic Potential is given the structure of an updated, sardonic, Pygmalion for the millennium generation.

Considering that Alan Ayckbourn may be the most staged living English playwright besides Shakespeare, as some accounts declare, why isn't he produced more often in American theaters? His trilogy The Norman Conquests and Absurd Person Singular have been seen in Rhode Island over the years, but sightings have been rare. One reason is that most of his plays are comedies of specific English manners, droll disputations within families an ocean away from us.

There should be no such problem with 2nd Story Theatre's production of Ayckborn's Comic Potential (through February 21), since belly-laughs, with which it's packed, tend to bypass critical brain functions.

"When this play is funny, it's as funny as anything I've encountered, as funny as any Feydeau," director Ed Shea says about it, speaking in his theater. "When it is satirical, it's as biting as any Durang. And when it is profound, it's sublimely profound."

If you don't believe him, would you believe John Simon? The New York magazine critic has been frequently excoriated for being mean-spirited, as in not above making fun of physical attributes (Barbra Streisand "looks like a cross between an aardvark and an albino rat").

And yet from Simon came a review that gushed to rival 'ol Spindletop:

"If you are going to see only one play in your life, make it Comic Potential! One of the finest plays of all my theatergoing decades. A spectacular achievement!"

After Shea came across that review, he was all but sold before he even picked up the play. After he read it, it was a done deal for this season.

The story has to do with a future in which androids have replaced flesh-and-blood actors, at least on low-budget TV shows. The main characters include a frustrated, burnt-out director of a never-ending soap opera, Chance (John Michael Richardson), who used to do good work directing classic comedies. Adam (Dillon Medina), an idealistic young writer, meets him and reminds him of when he used to love his job.

An opportunity to produce a comedy he can be proud of comes up when one of the soap opera androids, JC-F31-333, starts laughing off-script. But Jacie (Laura Sorensen) isn't malfunctioning, she's developing a human sense of humor. The director and his new acolyte decide to make a comedy for her, an effort that a jealous director, Pepperbloom (Lynne Collinson), wants to sabotage by erasing Jacie's memory bank. A kidnapping is in the offing and, maybe, love.

But Ayckbourn is giving us more than just laughs, he's recapitulating human development from birth through Western culture, pausing now and then for funny set pieces. As Shea points out, "Adam - he ain't called Adam for nothin' - just before he is stabbed in the rib by a pimp, he says Jacie should learn how to read. Of course, the only book in the hotel room is the Bible. And the words that she learns to read first are 'in the beginning.' She learns to read the beginning of Genesis, things starting again."

Serious stuff for a laff riot. Shea says that for this playwright, comedy is serious. "All of his plays. I don't know whether it's a thin layer of cynicism over the substance of comedy, or whether it's a thin layer of comedy over the substance of cynicism. I don't know which one it is, but it goes back and forth in this play."

"I think," Shea begins, then pauses a long while. "Keeping the actors on track, where they are not portraying characters but playing actions. I think that in portraying characters in this play there is a real danger that you could just play the villain, you could just play the washed-up drunken director, you could just play the innocent, hopeful youth, that it could stop in just a two-dimensional way."

Because there is such a meaningful, consequent underlying layer to this comedy, Shea says he feels "burdened" by his responsibility "to do justice to this brilliant piece of writing." And he laughs lightly.

If he does his job right, as he usually does, audiences too will be laughing, but much more than lightly.

2nd Story Theatre's latest production, Alan Ayckbourne's Comic Potential, is a delightfully raucous work of social commentary that pokes fun at the entertainment industry, technology, and how the two affect the creative process.

Prolific British playwright Ayckbourne's 54th play begins on the set of a daytime soap opera. The three actors in front of the camera are, in fact, robots - performers of the future, known as "actoids," whose words and actions are controlled by computer technicians.

At the helm of this theater-of-tomorrow is Chandler "Chance" Tate (John Michael Richardson), the high-strung, has-been director whose illustrious career dates back to the silver screen era when performers had pulses. When he isn't belittling set technicians Trudi (Susie Bowen-Powers) and Prim (Julie Parker), or locking horns with the studio's stolid regional director, Carla Pepperbloom (Lynne Collinson), he spends all his free time off-set drowning his sorrows.

On this particular day of filming, one of the actoids, Jacie Triplethree (Laura Sorensen), has repeated outbursts of laughter, so production is halted until her supposed programming error is fixed. Coincidentally, the studio has a visitor that same day, youngster and aspiring director Adam Trainsmith (Dillon Medina), a strong proponent of the vintage filmmaking process, who makes it his mission to help automaton Jacie understand the causes for laughter.

As Carla becomes increasingly impatient with the delays in production, Jacie evolves into Adam's muse, so he uses his influence as the nephew of Chairman of the Board, Lester Trainsmith (Bob Colonna), to propose a new idea for a show starring Jacie. Even after Jacie shows off her comedic chops - at Carla's expense, no less - the regional director remains unconvinced. Infuriated, she seeks to have the faulty actoid "melted down." Adam, now head-over-heels in love with Jacie, flees with his muse, who has seemingly become more human - so much so that she is soon capable of pointing out his mistakes.

The adventures of Jacie and Adam, as well as the network, are hilarious and unpredictable, but Ayckbourne set out to achieve more than laughter with this satirical work. Written in 1998, long before the explosion of reality television and CGI, the playwright envisioned a future that challenges an audience's ability to distinguish between reality, make believe, and legitimate (as opposed to engineered) creativity. He wants to amuse his audience, yet remind them that they may not be in on the joke.

Ed Shea's fine direction is especially precise in this production, complete with top-notch performances from the entire ensemble. With a mostly empty stage, his depiction of the arguably absurd world of network television, coupled with the cast, is laughable yet believable.

Medina shines in the role of Adam, the eager yet earnest aspiring artist who lets his ideas get the best of him. Sorensen brilliantly portrays Jacie with just the right amount of silliness and sensitivity.

Parker and Bowen-Powers nail their respective roles as corporate lackeys who are responsible for everything yet control nothing. For a play already rife with comedy, Paula Faber, Vince Petronio and Kevin Broccoli each take on several roles and further add to the ensuing hilarity. Colonna, as well, is clownish as Lester, even though his character barely speaks out loud.

Richardson is stellar as the jaded Chandler, especially when hurling insults at Collinson, superb as Carla, whose looks of disgust alone are priceless and speak volumes.

2nd Story's Comic Potential is profound, amusing and above all, terribly clever.

The third show of 2nd Story Theatre's season is the 1998 "Comic Potential" by British author, Alan Ayckbourn who has written 72 shows. It is a romantic sci-fi comedy. The show is set in a TV studio in the foreseeable future, when low-cost androids (actoids) have largely replaced actors. Idealistic young writer Adam Trainsmith meets Chandler Tate now known as Chance is a former director of classic comedies who makes a living by directing a never-ending soap opera. Adam greatly admires his past directorial work. The leading-role android makes a series of mistakes and the supporting role android spots his lapses and laughs. Later on, while Adam is watching an old slapstick comedy of Buster Keaton, the android laughs again. She is afraid that the sense of humor is a production fault. Adam sees it as an advantage and nicknames her Jacie and persuades Chandler that they should make a comedy for her. Regional TV director Carla Pepperbloom threatens to ruin the project because she is jealous of Adam's sympathy for the talented Jacie and orders the android's memory wiped out. Adam panics and decides to kidnap Jacie but while on the lam they fall in love. To reveal any further details will spoil the fun for the audience. "Comic Potential" is Aychbourn's fifty-third full-length play. The show is about the ability to laugh and the ability to fall in love. They are both illogical and therefore differentiate humans from androids. The comedy also explores the Pygmalion syndrome and competing desires for autonomy and certainty. Director Ed Shea casts the most talented 10 performers in these roles, garnering much laughter along the way with their expertise at farcical situations.

Ed is aided in his task by productions manager, Max Ponticelli who keeps the set pieces appearing at the appropriate moments and keeps the scenes flowing along beautifully. Topnotch work is also done by costume designer Ron Cesario, lighting by Ron Allen and music by John Connery. Laura Sorensen who is gorgeous and ethereal plays Jacie who is onstage almost the whole time as the actoid. From her infectious laughter in the opening scene in the futuristic soap opera where she is dressed as a nurse to the end of this show, she shines in this comic role. Laura makes this character vulnerable and appealing. Some of her funniest moments come when she is in the dress shop to pick out new clothes, wears a garment bag, moons the audience in her new dress, throws a custard pie in Carla's face when Carla calls her talentless because she is only an actoid and in the restaurant with Adam when her alarm for her waste disposal needs to be emptied. After this hilarious moment she exclaims "Once a man has seen your trap door, it's all over" which was drowned out by uproarious laughter. Dillon Medina who is only 22 years old, mesmerizes the audience with his talent. He plays Adam who is comparable to a futuristic Pygmalion when he teaches Jacie how to love a human being as well as teaches her how to read using the bible in a hotel room. He is dynamic in this leading role. Dillon delivers a show stopping rapid fire description of his script to his uncle and his funniest scene is when he crawls under the table at the restaurant to empty Jacie as she shrieks in delight like Meg Ryan in "Sleepless in Seattle" while a husband and wife enjoy the proceedings. Dillon and Laura have excellent chemistry with each other. They capture the sympathy of the audience who root for them to have a successful relationship. To find out whether a man can love a robot in the future, one has to see this show.

Lynne Collinson plays the man eating, bitchy Carla Pepperbloom to the hilt. She obtains many laughs as this Cruela DaVille type of character. Clad in a red wig dressed in gorgeous costumes, she exclaims nothing personal when she fires people and spouts legalize to Adam when he refuses to have supper with her. The pie in the face is hilarious. (Lynne also excels in dramatic roles, having directed her as Laura in "The Glass Menagerie" in 1986.) John Michael Richardson is a hoot as Chance, the hard drinking, fading director who has become disillusioned by the business, only to be brought back to life by Adam's comedy ideas for Jacie. After Adam describes his comedy script in rapid fire delivery to his Uncle Lester who runs the TV station, Chance says he is like Zero Mostel on speed. He has many funny lines in his arguments with his two assistants, calling them many derogatory names and calls Carla, Black Death. Chance realizes that this is his last chance to do a worthwhile project with Adam. John Michael is not only an excellent actor but a brilliant director. Chance's two assistants, Trudi Floote and Prim Spring are wonderfully played by Susan Bowen Powers and Juli Parker. They have a lot of bickering going on in the control room with Chance who infers that they are lovers. Trudi warns Adam to be careful with Jacie that he is having actoid empathy. Trudi is an engineer and Prim is the computer programmer for the actoids. They eventually grow to like Adam's calming influence on Chance. Rounding out the cast playing multiple comic roles are Bob Colonna (who directed me in "A Winter's Tale" and "Taming of the Shrew" at TRIST in 1987 and 1990 respectively) Kevin Broccoli, Vince Petronio and Paula Faber. So for a thought provoking laugh out loud comedy with a lot of comic potential to help you escape this brutal winter, be sure to catch Comic Potential" at 2nd Story Theatre.

There are not, in my experience, nearly enough plays about androids. Oh sure, the term "robot" does come from a play, Karel Capek's "Rossum's Universal Robots" written in 1920, primarily, I think, to serve as an obscure reference point. But when was the last time, apart from exceptionally stilted performances, you actually saw androids on stage?

Well, thanks to Warren's 2nd Story Theatre, that time is now and I'm sure I don't mean in terms of on-stage stiffness. No, 2nd Story is mounting Alan Ayckbourn's "Comic Potential," a play set in the near future when flesh and blood actors have been usurped by "actoids," mechanical thespians each one of whom as lively and lifelike as Keannu Reeves, even.

The play, described best as a futuristic variation on "Pygmalion," is really more allegory than sci-fi. "Comic Potential" explores the concept of creativity itself and the nature of those all too human constructions, namely, laughter and love.

2nd Story's production features Bristol's Dillon Medina in the role of Adam Trainsmith, an idealistic young writer who sees the comic, and by extension, human potential of actor/android Janice Triplethree when, perhaps through a programming glitch, she starts to laugh. It's refreshing that there seems to be here a certain essential humanity in the old Vaudeville dictum that "you can't fake funny."

Regardless of potential light-year leaps in the science of perfecting artificial intelligence, Mr. Medina is an actor in no danger of ever being replaced by a machine. Ever earnest and engaged on stage, this 22-year-old Rhode Island College English major has been creating quite an impression during the three years or so he's been at 2nd Story. He stood out amidst a score of wacky characters in last summer's "You Can't Take it With You," stealing the show and making it his own, which ain't easy to do when you're the straight man and romantic lead in a comedy.

I'm pleased to report that Mr. Medina is as thoughtful and funny offstage as he appears on the boards (perhaps boyish charm was written into his program's subroutine) and he certainly seemed lifelike enough when he was good enough to field a few questions, including the obvious one: In this age of computer-generated imagery (CGIs) and avatars, is there any danger of technology replacing live actors?

"I highly doubt it," said Mr. Medina. "Yes, CGI is cool but in the end it's animation. Human stories require human storytellers. But I think 'Comic Potential' is spot on in terms of how we live today because so many of its characters have trouble relating to other people. And we're all so inundated with technology these days that we're distanced from others and tend to lose touch with the realities of other people's existence. I mean, you can talk to someone for years on Facebook, learn their most intimate secrets yet never meet them face to face. So you never really know them as a person, only as an electronic web of ideas that are painted by your perception."

The sense of community created by theater is decidedly low-tech and perhaps all the more viable because of that. But what makes "Comic Potential" special?

"Because this play is amazing" Mr. Medina replies, "The play is smart, funny, touching, revealing. What really knocks me out about it is how profound it gets. It asks some serious questions about what it means to be human, to have a soul and to undergo the tumultuous process of creation. It's brilliant."

Performers often talk about the mechanics of acting. Aren't actors, as they rely on techniques and methods, already imbued with a sort of artificial intelligence? "This play actually points out how vague the line is between a mechanical human and biological machine. And I've been lucky to work with some amazingly talented, intelligent actors who are anything but artificial," said Mr. Medina.

One of those intelligent actors is Carol Schlink, the 2nd Story stalwart who teaches drama at Mt. Hope High in Bristol. "A more wonderful person you would be hard-pressed to find" continued Mr. Medina. "She is a dedicated and supremely talented teacher and she instilled in me the love I have for theater and acting. And I've learned so much during my time at 2nd Story. Ed Shea has taught me a great deal not only about acting but also about being a human being."

The art of being human cannot be acquired from our constructed soft and hardware, but requires instead our being aware. Alan Ayckbourn wrote "Comic Potential" in 1998, right on the cusp of the reality TV craze in which folks who might as well be robots assume an ersatz sense of the ordinary in front of ubiquitous television cameras, eliciting vicarious passions for big cash prizes.

Perhaps it's not the performers who are androids but ourselves. But the audience of this barren virtual landscape can find relief in the confines of the theater where it's always the human race that is amazing.

It is such a warm, wonderful feeling to love a play you weren't expecting to, that I write this particular review of "Comic Potential," by the English playwright Alan Ayckbourn, with more than usual enthusiasm.

Not only does 2nd Story Theatre in Warren apparently have the most consistently funny cast of characters in Rhode Island; they also have great taste. They've dug up this out-of-the-box play and then totally nailed it: it's a very clever, witty show, but as emotionally resonant as it is smart. I call it a must-see, without any reservations.

"Comic Potential" is a contemporary play with a futuristic setting about robots infiltrating the entertainment world, which sounds like it could be a serious and boring stage version of George Orwell's "1984," but not at all. It's matter-of-fact realistic about the machine age we're living in, but also passionately respectful of the way entertainment was done in the black-and-white days of old Hollywood, incorporating several old-school elements straight from the 1930s Screwball Comedy playbook - such as the star-crossed lovers running away from authorities and the press, as in "It Happened One Night," or "Nothing Sacred," and the "let's-put-on-a-show!" goofy gaiety of a Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney musical. Meanwhile, the humor, thank goodness, is 100-percent present-day, the exact opposite of being aw-shucks-y or quaint and I'm very grateful to Ayckbourn, and 2nd Story, for achieving that perfect balance, acknowledging the old classics - Preston Sturges and Buster Keaton are revered here - while creating something relevant to our current Internet-and-cell-phone and I-Phone and I-Pad era.

That beautiful balance is embodied in the romantic heroine of a girl-robot-"actoid" named Jacie, played by Laura Sorenson, who at last is in a role made for her bright humor and energy, who turns out to be more human than most real humans in the play, even reaching an e.e. cummings kind of charm and brilliance in one particular monologue involving Adam and Eve and the Bible (see it for yourself: it's great!). She, and the other heroes of the play, irreverent bitter iconoclasts all of them, succeed in shaking up a modern-day corporate TV studio with some old-fashioned, flights-of-fancy.

This production is so satisfying that the very good actors I always enjoy, such as Vince Petronio (who was most recently the 2nd story star of 'To Kill a Mockingbird), Bob Colonna, Lynne Collinson and John Michael Richardson are always fantastic to watch, while the pretty good actors like Kevin Broccoli, Paula Faber and Dillon Medina find some greatness I hadn't seen before. Maybe they're freshly inspired by this flawless play and how could they not be? It has some good insight about how we all act like programmed machines, if we allow ourselves, but it uses a jolly, Britishly bawdy, unforced humor to go about embracing life in all its pain and goose-bumpy joy and I loved it.