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Regional Reviews: St. Louis Stay a While: A Birthday Play in Four Seasons Also see Richard's reviews of Appropriate, The Last Show on Earth, The Color Purple and Louisa May Alcott's Little Women
It's a one-man show, but there's also a martyr and a miracle. And the show goes on in a bar, the Greenfinch Theatre and Dive, which may seem problematic for such a deeply personal transformation. And the show may remind you of "Pee Wee's Playhouse" in the opening minutes. It helps a lot that Stay a While is directed with a kind of magical sneakiness by the artist known as Keating, transubstantiating the elements of suburbia into sacrament. To a believer, it'll all sound like comedy, which of course it is. Three volunteers from the audience are thrown into a fiery furnace of a guessing game on stage, and a roster of the saints (from the Food Network circa 2003) is invoked, ringing like a tuning fork to get us all on the same pitch. Funny hats are donned, and somehow those change people in ways we might have forgotten. All the while, Mr. Flynn is the crackle of lightning and the witness of thunder at the wide, shallow storefront venue, which turns out to be perfect for the most down-to-earth kind of spiritual exploration. Yes, he exists (superficially) in a church of consumerism. But where else are you going to get a packet of chips and a retro-futurist children's drink? In this case, the results are the same, as a second cousin to religion leading us toward a private apotheosis in a fading moment historians sometimes refer to as "the great peace." And, for longer than you might expect, a covenant of chips and orange-flavored refreshments seems genuinely eternal. There are huge, almost cataclysmic ups and downs in the personal little story, the kind that bang in your head for hours afterward. But there's also a singalong, and a series of deep ruminating moments rising up under the lights. It takes you back in time and plops you down amongst all the other little kids, as both kinds of camp. It's a party on stage that smartly draws you in, where you don't have to make any small talk or be the nervous drinker. Although you could be: there's a huge old bar out in the next room, at the former Way Out Club. But you really won't need it, drinking in the spirit of the show. Stay a While: A Birthday Play in Four Seasons, produced by Rug Burn Theatre, runs through September 26, 2026, at Greenfinch Theatre and Dive, 2525 South Jefferson Blvd., St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.rugburntheatre.com. Cast: Production Staff: |
