Ice Cream Social Disease

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

The program states that the set is an abandoned Drive-In movie theater, but there is no evidence of IT ever being one for Matthew Schultz’s new play The Ice Cream Social Disease. With its levels of crates, boxes, platform, and draped blankets, it could be an abandoned any non-descript building.

A calamity of some sort has taken place destroying nearly everything and everyone, but the script leaves to anyone’s guess as to what happened or why. Five characters find themselves under the same roof struggling to establish a sense of community, yet no one has the foggiest idea how to accomplish this. Between the unnecessary screaming and nearly inaudible whisperings, a good many subjects could be discussed without anyone knowing about it.

Niles and Holly (Brian Lewis and Sara Rae Downey) stumble onto this abandoned building only to discover two others have already nested. Jake (Mike Holzer) acts like a wild frightened animal. For some unknown reason he has forsaken speech for most of the play. Mark (Phil Newsom), laid back with a devil-may-care attitude, acts as though he’s been living in these surroundings for sometime and could care less as to what happens, much less when. Niles reverts to a five-year-old mentality of comic book heroes demanding to be waited on hand and foot, which Holly obediently does. If this is to demonstrate the power of love, it doesn’t work. Niles should be set straight or kicked out for acting like a spoiled ignoramus. No one has the balls to stand up to him.

One more character, Lily (Laura Chavez), bursts onto the scene setting nearly everyone’s teeth on edge.

With all they have supposedly gone through, it doesn’t read that a mouse would send anyone into five minutes of hysterics as it does Holly. If one wants five minutes of screaming, something far more realistic could be found than simply a mouse.

When the five-year-old Niles kicks over the two water buckets because he can’t get his way, Lily goes for water, remembering a river she saw 5-10 miles away. Gone for six days, she returns with two partially filled buckets. Niles questions the safety of the water. Lily takes one sip from Jake’s cup and dies on the spot. Is the audience to believe she walked three days and when she got to the river, she didn’t drink? Is the audience supposed to believe she carried two buckets of water back from the river and didn’t drink any??? The logic does not fit. The keeping the body wrapped in a blanket to the point of decay does not work as a believable option. It is never defined why they are afraid to take the body outside. Have the dinosaurs returned? Have Indians surrounded the camp? Did an A-Bomb explode? Lily survived outside on a six-day trek, and no one can take a body outside?

Although the cast gives as good a performance as they can with what they have to work with, there are far too many holes in the script for a viable performance. Every generation wants to raise the question: will the values of the here and now work in a new world structure? Or will connections, love, and community fall apart?

Dialogue by its very nature must aid in moving the play along. Way too much of the dialogue in Ice Cream Social Disease moves in silent circles, going nowhere slowly. It neither provides new information, nor reveals anything about the characters. It spins quiets whispers of nothingness. This makes it difficult to care about any of the characters.

Schultz shows signs of being a playwright, but he needs to take Ice Cream Social Disease back to the drawing board, re-think his purpose, his characters, his premise, and close some glaring illogical holes in the thought process. It would help if the title had a connection to the play. Is ice cream a social disease? Or is an ice cream social a disease all by itself? Is this what caused the calamity? Did the cows strike against ice cream and destroyed the world? No more illogical thought than what was presented on the boards.