‘Spearminted’ starts strong but falters in second act

"Spearminted" - an original play by Erica Griffin now at Las Vegas Little Theatre's Fischer Black Box - had me intrigued during much of the first act. The author and director Shawn Hackler get us immediately interested with some hard-edged DJing and two people onstage who don't seem a part of each other's worlds. One is a woman who's a Vegas stripper about to be exiled into the morning slot at a sleazy club. The other is a man whose job involves twirling a sign advertising 69-cent tacos.

A car crash connects their lives. After a long period in a coma, the man comes to, and the woman - mostly out of guilt for causing his injuries - spends a lot of time with him.

Griffin and Hackler nicely package the first act: plenty of fast pacing, unexpected visual beauty and varied rhythms. What I liked best is Griffin's ability to slowly establish a romantic relationship with two very different people. Her dialogue is often clever, but better yet, she knows when to stop being clever and just let her characters talk. She also has created a nifty dramatic device: The man has amnesia, and the aging stripper feels she's losing her identity. It's obvious that this is a story about two people who don't know who they are.

But in the second act, the more I learned about them, the less I cared. The two analyze their feelings so often - and so melodramatically - that I felt Griffin was just repeating herself. The audience is way ahead of her.

Erin Marie Sullivan plays the woman with the stereotypical high-pitched squealy voice of the dumb blonde. She's tough to listen to. Mario Mendez as the man gives an extraordinarily natural performance in the first act. You can feel his amusement at getting to know such an eccentric, and you sense a genuine growing sexual attraction. But in the second act, he falls victim to histrionics. He has one too many nervous breakdowns.

I hope Griffin loses her tendency to overexplain and overfeel. Her first act is rich in suggestion. I wish the second were equally complete and ambiguous.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at vegastheaterchat@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.