Lonesome Winter

"Lonesome Winter" tells the story of sad sack Winter (Megan Hill, also the play's co-author), a shopaholic who works at the home-shopping channel as a telephone operator, and how she is saved from committing suicide by an angel (Nicole Beerman) who looks just like the channel's glamorous show host and talks in New Age aphorisms. As Winter's birthday is on Christmas, the show also bills itself as a Christmas story. But "It's a Wonderful Life" this isn't.

Playwrights Joshua Conkel (who also plays Sparkles the Cat) and Hill want it both ways: The play makes fun of Winter and her pathetic life but also wants us to care about her. It doesn't work. Instead of sending up clichés, "Lonesome Winter" abounds in them. A scene of Winter unable to throw anything out could be taken moment for moment from "Hoarders." That Winter's sister Avery (Kirsten Hopkins) knows the TV show doesn't excuse the blatant rip-off.

At times the characters' personalities vary so wildly that it feels as though the play had 20 authors rather than two. For example, Sparkles is hilarious when he's speaking aloud the things a cat would say—"I haven't forgiven you; I'm just hungry"—but when he begins to talk like an angry clothes designer, saying "lookatcha" about Winter's clothing, he's not catlike and not funny. As Bobby, who works in the mailroom and befriends Winter, Nick Lewis overdoes his stoner eagerness and speaks with a weird, slow emphasis. Hill irritates with a whiny delivery, keeping Winter a cartoon despite the character's sincerity.

Incessant scene changes don't help, and the play relies on music to set the mood in a very lazy way. Director Meg Sturiano goes for obvious shtick. Every now and then there is a genuinely funny line, as you'd expect in a sketch, which is all "Lonesome Winter" can claim to be.



Presented by the Management and Horse Trade Theater Group at Under St. Marks, 94 St. Marks Place, NYC. Dec. 2–19. Thu.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. (212) 868-4444 or www.smarttix.com.