Review: Miss Witherspoon at City Theatre

Christmas may be over, but a good Scrooge tale never really gets old. Particularly when it comes from a classic American playwright and is performed with ironic gusto by some of Austin's finest actors. Nonbelievers and Christmas-haters fear not: there are no ghosts of Christmas past, present or future in the Different Stages production of Miss Witherspoon, an existential crisis of a play by Christopher Durang. However, Gandalfs, Jesuses and Indian spirit guides there are aplenty, and all for the audience's enjoyment and despair. Miss Witherspoon is a pleasant conversation, rather than a heated debate, about the state of our troubled world, souls and potential afterlife.

The wonderfully surly, oft-suicidal Miss Witherspoon herself is played by Jennifer Underwood, who never fails to disappoint in any of her nigh-hundreds of roles across a wide swath of Austin theatres. When Miss Witherspoon finds herself (as a result of offing herself) in an unexpected afterlife, she must negotiate the realm of reincarnation with the help of Suzanne Balling's pleasantly annoying South Asian spiritual guide Maryamma and a diverse cast of earthly families and friends played by Camille Latour, Patricia Robinson and Derek Jones, all of whom handle their multitude of roles with ease.

Despite the rather sexy set, filled with bulbous lanterns and flashing, pulsating lights, Miss Witherspoon is perhaps not the ideal date show, unless one is dying to have a religious discussion before a romp in the proverbial hay later on. The production will, however, make great conversational fodder for your group of curious, intellectual and invariably attractive friends. Aren't all your friends like that? Good! Get thee to the City Theatre, then!