REVIEW: Literary tale speaks volumes at Old Creamery Theatre

AMANA - 'Underneath the Lintel,” the one-man show playing out on the Old Creamery Theatre stage through April 9, poses the question, Aren't we all standing underneath the lintel at any given time and circumstance?

To answer that, you must first know the meaning of 'lintel.” That structure connecting and supporting the sides of an opening like a door or window or fireplace. In the play, it refers to several doorways where conversations completely changed the course of lives, condemning one person to wander unnoticed for eternity and another to a solitary life without his true love.

Glen Berger's play, full of pith and pathos, delight and despair, is expertly told by Patrick O'Brien of Edina, Minn., a professional actor whose resume ranges from 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and 'Catch Me If You Can” in movie theaters to 'The West Wing” and Mr. Dewey on 'Saved by the Bell” on TV.

We have so many exceptional performers living among us in the Corridor, but when actors who ply their artistry full time step onto our stages, the level just jumps higher, as it did when the divas from 'Wicked” sang with Orchestra Iowa last fall. And as it does with O'Brien in the spotlight. These performances become master-classes in storytelling.

O'Brien is utterly engaging before the show even starts. Audience members will want to be in their seats at least 15 minutes before showtime, to see how O'Brien, completely in character, scurries about his tasks of placing card tables, a chair, a bookcase, a projection screen and props in the space in front of the theater's grand drape.

Since the Old Creamery lost its small studio venue in the Middle Amana school, this production seeks to replicate that intimate feel by bringing the action right up to the audience - and it works.

O'Brien embodies his career-librarian with a tweedy fussiness that dictates everything must be in its proper place. So when he finds a travel guide 123 years overdue in the overnight book drop, it turns his world upside down. He becomes obsessed with tracking down the offender so he can render a fine. No stone goes unturned as he follows fragmented clues all over the world on an impossible dream that's threatening his sanity.

Perfect pacing lends a magnificent ebb and flow to the librarian's 70-minute roller coaster ride, spiked with silence and shouting. And all manner of literary devices that will delight anyone who has spent any time at all traversing the wonderful world of books.

l Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com

- What: 'Underneath the Lintel”

- Where: Old Creamery Theatre, 39 38th Ave., Amana

- When: To April 9; 2 p.m. Thursday, Sunday; 7:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday

- Tickets: $16 to $26, Old Creamery Box Office, (319) 622-6262 or Oldcreamery.com