Sharp Dialogue, Witty Acting On The Weekend

For 28 years, Lucy Hopperstaad has kept house for David Kilbride, an enormously wealthy and successful novelist with a succession of former wives (the last one wildly faithless) and a bad case of writer's block. In three years he has written 20 pages.

She knows everything about him. 

He, however, knows practically nothing about her: not even her first name or how much he pays her. But he's curious on this particular day. He wants to know her story. "Regale me," he says. So it's not long before David learns her name, that she has a taste for single malt whiskey and that her salary, much to his chagrin, which is based on her own annual performance reviews, is $97,000 a year. And so begins Norm Foster's delightful, two-person comedy: "On a First Name Basis."

As with most productions of the Taconic Stage Company, this play is mounted on the altar of St. John in the Wilderness Church on Route 341, in Copake Falls, NY. The stage, so to speak, is lit warmly by stained-glass windows and the set is basically two chairs and a succession of  bottles. But for all that this is a talky and static play, the dialogue is sharp, and the acting by Susan Fullerton and Jeffrey Judd is witty. When David asks Lucy for glasses, she says, " 'What am I, your maid?' I always wanted to say that."

With aplomb, Foster slides some tragedy into the mix, to make these two more human, and gradually the relationship is altered. Irrevocably. And delightfully.

"On a First Name Basis," directed by Carl Ritchie, runs weekends at St. John in the Wilderness Church in Copake Falls, NY, through Aug. 23. For tickets and information, call 518-325-1234 or go to www.taconicstage.com.