The Guitar Teacher: An Arctic Romance
THREE STARS | Randy Rutherford's story is sweet and sad and his manner is charming
Rating: ★★★
Company: Randy Rutherford Presents, San Francisco
Genre: Play — Comedy
Venue: 11 — Red River College, Roblin Centre
Most of us can recall many times that, after saying something awkward, we thought later of the perfect thing to have said.
Randy Rutherford's sharpest stage skill is to capture that moment repeatedly but in reverse. He says to us what the perfect thing would be, then says aloud the actuality and it is routinely funny and indeed awkward.
But his delivery wavers between feeling extemporaneous and feeling like he's not quite remembering what is supposed to come next. I am a tyrant for clear effective transitions because they just make audiences feel better.
Rutherford's story, about a young aspiring musician in Alaska who falls in love with his guitar teacher's girlfriend, is sweet and sad and his manner is charming.
His character's persistent naïveté gets a little wearing but so do most 21-year-olds. Perhaps like most of us he imagines himself to have been more innocent than he actually was at the time.
