Actress Barbara Sloan is literally engaging even before she takes the stage in South Florida as the funny, good-humored, terrified-of-heights Narrator in High Dive. She's in New Theater's tiny lobby or outside on the Coral Gables sidewalk a half-hour before curtain, affably and enthusiastically recruiting audience members to play onlookers or family members more than 30 mostly one-line roles. As playwright Leslie Ayvazian, who performed the largely autobiographical role herself in New York in 2001, explains it in the published version of the play, she wanted to give audience members, who call out their lines from their seats, "a way to jump into the play. The high dive metaphor worked in this way ... was, in itself, the point of the show."
The metaphor aside, the point of this show is to spend an hour laughing at well-told tales of terrible vacations and backstage antics. The idea is that the Narrator is frozen by dark fear on the high-dive board at a Greek resort where the weather is a sunny 112 degrees. She's about to turn 50 and has lived just barely through a lifetime of awful outdoor activities (a fish-freezing cold spell in Florida, a hurricane and earthquake elsewhere, a life-altering motorcycle accident) and awkward moments in the theater. Like the playwright, the Narrator studied theater in college, spent two years in Ohio as part of VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), then had some paying jobs and interesting encounters (Mickey Rooney, Dorothy Lamour) in small theaters and on television ("The $25,000 Pyramid," where she was paired with an unhelpful to say the least -- Peter Lawford).
The staging is simple. Dominating is a metal extension ladder for Sloan to hold on to as the Narrator contemplates the dive. (She leaves it to relive the tales.) Audience members who will shout out a line or two are given numbered pages on clipboards; the teenager who plays the Son sits on a (poolside) lounge chair and occasionally flips boards that warn which pages have lines coming up (7,8,3,33,34). That's it.
Some funny stories. Some audience participation. New Theater bills it as a light comedy. It is that, and one that glows with an engaging, warm-hearted performance.
