Curb Appeal: Where the Heart Is

---

Curb Appeal: Where the Heart Is

Hyde Park Theatre,

through April 22

Steven Tomlinson's Curb Appeal builds on a basic foundation -- the inherent similarities of dating and house hunting -- and constructs room by well-appointed room a more stately mansion of the soul. Austin's best monologist is writing at the top of his skill here and joining so many disparate pieces toward the culmination of this personal, dramatic edifice that the observing mind boggles in wondering how they might finally fit together.

If any staged artwork can be compared to architecture, then Curb Appeal can be specifically described as a cathedral, due to its complexity, its ornamentation, its craftsmanship, and the depth of its themes. And if the word "cathedral" also brings to mind a particular collection of short stories, then that's helpful, too, review-wise. Imagine: David Sedaris possessed by the ghost of Raymond Carver ...

But it's not just the writing, of course. This is, after all, Steven Tomlinson. This is a man who, it seems, could make the reading of your most boring neighbor's grocery list a compelling, amusing, and thoroughly edifying experience. And he and director Christina J. Moore have brought a whole houseload of dramatic furniture to intensify the show. There is, as a highly effective shtick, a series of game-show scenarios, featuring Marisa Pisano as the usual vacuously smiling hostess, which serves to highlight all the points that Tomlinson uncovers along his dating/real estate journey; it also provides more sharply defined frames in which to witness the evolution of our hapless hero's perceptions of the story's progressions. There is the set by Christopher McCollum that's so simple and bold and ingeniously transformable that you'd think it was created by the Mighty Real Estate Power Rangers. And there's Stephen Pruitt's lighting, adding photic emphasis to Tomlinson's various characterizations: of real estate agents, of priests, of building contractors, of townies, of boyfriends, of himself -- as teacher, as student, as consumer, as seller, as bereaved partner.

Your perception of Austin will be changed, too, for this story celebrates the river city as it celebrates life itself. You'll laugh, you'll cry, as they say. And sometimes, in the midst of shared grief bringing tears to your eyes, Tomlinson will make a gently humorous observation, and you'll feel like, okay, someone's been twisting a knife into my heart but now they've added nitrous oxide.

The tall man starts talking as soon as the lights come up and doesn't stop until they go down, and he's so good, the whole show is so near perfection, that the only way to properly tell how flawless it is is to point out the single problem from the performance I saw.

At one point, Tomlinson replaced a sheet of paper -- a list of real estate listings? -- behind a prop. And later, during yet another smooth set transformation, this sheet of paper drifted out and fell to the stage floor. And Tomlinson, not breaking stride or rhythm or anything, not even seeming to take notice, tried to smoothly kick it out of sight ... but failed to do so.

And there you have it. It's laughable that that was the only flaw in the entire glorious show; it probably won't even happen again, and it's like a scratch on the Taj Mahal. Or a small chip out of one brick in one corner of a very fine cathedral.