Because as Judith 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.”
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. 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.
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. 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.