Even if the beloved-by-so-many band Phish isn’t your jam, the new play “You Enjoy Myself” very well might be. Because as Judith (Eden Lane) tells the audience at the outset of Topher Payne’s intricate, sexually frisky and open-hearted work, “Melody and memory cradle you, wrapped up in your collected stories … whether you feel swaddled or smothered … You’re just there.”
Music’s power to be exquisitely personal even as it can be deeply communal is on fine display as the comedy’s Phish phanatics and their loved ones revisit their bonds and forge new ones. “You Enjoy Myself” is receiving its world premiere at the Dairy Center for the Arts thanks to the diligent work of the Boulder-based Local Theater Company, which nurtured the sly comedy at its 2022 annual development gathering, Local Lab.
A decades-long “phan” of the jam band, Judith is both our guide and, as the play deepens, a participant in the story of six likable souls reckoning with their loves — past, current and future — at her Vermont farmhouse. It’s a magical little hideaway (scenic design and piquant props by way of designer Susan Crabtree) festooned with Christmas lights. The sign above at the entrance to the property minces no words: “Leave Your (Expletive) At the Gate.”
As she stands on her porch eying the audience and setting up the action about to take place in a hotel room in St. Louis, Judith has a way of seeming above the fray. She’s a collector of stories, she tells us. She’s not one for self-disclosure, she also says. (The play will upend her on the latter point.) What a storyteller can and cannot control is one of the play’s themes, especially when it comes to his or her own heartbreak and love stories.
And so, like a hippie goddess, she looks over at “Isabel” (Anne Sandoe) and Archie (Ryan Omar Stack). The morning after a recent Phish concert, Isabel’s entangled in the bedsheets. From off stage, Archie’s singing as he showers. She’s told her one-night paramour her name is Isabel, but it’s actually Eileen, and her choice of nom de hook-up will be appropriately lampooned later in the show. Archie saunters into the room. He’s noticeably younger and at ease; he’s also a musician. “Where are my clothes?” she wonders aloud as she begins her escape. “And what did I do at that concert?”
From her farmhouse perch, Judith smiles and points out that Eileen’s question is among the most commonly asked “the morning after a Phish show.” That Judith interacts with the action even as, in short order, she will become enmeshed in it is one of the play’s beguiling attributes. As Judith, Lane has the heaviest lift of the play. She has to exert the sly control of a knowing narrator while subtly portraying the touching if shifting vulnerability of an artist. It’s tricky work. Opening light, Lane grasped the first part of that tricky balance with aplomb, but appeared mildly self-conscious inhabiting the latter.
Soon there is another pair and another bed. Couple Jasper (Jihad Milhem) and Isabel (Iliana Lucero Barron) have just had sex when Jasper decides to tell her a story. “I’m always fascinated by how people choose to open a conversation they know isn’t going to go well,” says Judith by way of an uh-oh.
It does not go well. A musician doing backup for an “American Idol” tour, Jasper hits the road along with Archie. He’s pretty sure he’s lost Izzy, and it gnaws at him.
He may be right. In an impulsive payback scheme goosed by her bestie, Cory (Bobby Bennet), Izzy, a Phish lover, decides to head to Vermont to seduce Scott Sheridan, the author of her favorite book: “The Girl Who Stepped Into Yesterday.” Phish heads out there will recognize that title as a play on guitarist-lead vocalist Trey Anastasio’s 1987 concept album.
There are nods to lyrics throughout the dialog, and all sorts of other secret handshake stuff are woven into the play. (To wit: Izzy’s donut dress.) The play namechecks other jam bands — the Grateful Dead and Widespread Panic — but also skillfully salts in several pop culture references, among them “Friends,” Katy Perry and “American Idol.”
The play’s title comes courtesy of the Phish song of the same name. The entreaty of that title feels both wry and nonsensical, insistent yet seemingly impossible to do. “You enjoy myself” — huh? But as one Phish acolyte shared post-show, Payne’s play isn’t nearly as wildly idiosyncratic as the quartet his characters are inspired by. And that’s a good thing. The shell game of love and desire of “Twelfth Night” might be closer kin.
Seeking to woo Izzy back, Jasper convinces Archie to take a detour to Vermont. And remember that one-night stand Archie had? Well, Isabel/Eileen shows up, too. She and Judith have a riven and achy romantic history. Oh yeah, she’s also Jasper’s mom.
“Hey” — the known jam-band invitation to play along, to find the melody of another musician and build on it — becomes a leitmotif that connects the ardor and agility of Phish and its fans to the wonders of live theater and the characters gathered here.
In another sign that the play is playful in form, musical director Joe Mazza, as the oft-present Musician, strums his guitar from yhe sidelines in melodic response to the call of the action. And there’s so much funny, wounded, sexually adventurous, winking and sincere action in “You Enjoy Myself.”
Even so, the most charming of it might be the tête-à-têtes between Cory and Archie. Cory’s ability to be droll is his gift but also his armor. And Bennet plays him with unerring timing. As for Archie, Stack allows his character’s sexy ease and sweetness their own more meaningful contradictions.
As friends of the vexed lovers, they might appear to be the odd ones out. Yet, brought to joyous life by two ace performances, they hash out the gender/desire/sexuality complexities and personal truths (rife but also open to revision) in this contemporary comedy.
Under the deft direction of Local’s co-artistic director Betty Hart, the entire ensemble hums, strums and finds a beautifully shared melody. “You Enjoy Myself” had us at “hey.”
IF YOU GO
“You Enjoy Myself”: Written by Topher Payne. Directed by Betty Hart. Featuring Bobby Bennet, Eden Lane, Iliana Lucero Barron, Jihad Milhem, Ryan Omar Stack and Anne Sandoe. A Local Theater Company world premiere. At the Dairy Center for the Arts, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder. Through Oct. 14. localtheatreco.org. and dairy.org
