If ever a play and players sought a perfect venue and audience, all could not find a better fit than at summer's end at FST. Since late life romances aren't new to Sarasota playgoers, a fictional version must be authentic. Southern Comforts aces that requirement.
Amanda Cross, helping out her daughter who has married and moved to New Jersey from their native Tennessee, delivers church donation envelopes to Gus Klingman. They may as well have contained letters of intent, for she's quickly flirting and soon watching a televised ballgame with him.
From then on, theirs is a relationship of touch and go, as they move from widowed to wooed to wed to deepest coupling. Pretty Susan Greenhill looks to be crying inside when her Amanda reveals how her husband had returned changed from being at war. Richard Bourg's gruff Gus shyly admits to his wife Helen's loss of "interest" that led to rejection. "You and I both missed out, didn't we?" Amanda is sure.
The two oldsters can get along about things like socializing and the important matter of sex (handled in what used to be called matinee comedy style). But, both having become set in their ways, a lot of adjustments will have to be made. If she's to leave her beloved Southern home, he's got to let her incorporate most of it into his. (Watching her move in during intermission is a treat.)
Of all the "Southern Comforts" Amanda brings to Gus's Northern house and complacent attitudes, modernizing windows to foil the cold isn't among them. His hilarious (if a bit protracted) struggle to put up "storms" (with its possibilities of an accident) lead comically but eventually crucially to a question of where and how they plan to be buried.
Crisis: Will a matter of tombstones separate them in the here and now?
Not only is Kathleen Clark's play well made, so is the parade of character-defining costumes (any Southern belle would glory in Amanda's colorful outfits). They also, as do set and lighting changes, show the passing of seasons.
Without any flashiness, Richard Bourg makes his face generate a range of changing feelings. Though Amanda initiates most of the action, pert Susan Greenhill never lets her seem manipulative. Amanda's need for Gus is always as clear as the "comfort" she brings him. Director Robert J. Farley projects a consistent perspective on the subject of elders in love: It's normal and nice to share. At FST, it's also pertinent and entertaining.
