STAGE SCHEMERS: Plot focuses on Willie & Esther, not the robbery

By Tim Clodfelter, Winston-Salem Journal
tclodfelter@wsjournal.com, 336-727-7371
August 3, 2005

Two would-be robbers are at the center of Willie & Esther, a likeable romantic comedy directed by Lorna Littleway and produced by the Black Spectrum Theatre Company of New York.
 
Esther (Ella Joyce of the critically acclaimed 1991-94 sitcom Roc) is the more sensible of the two, a beauty-shop worker who is content to live a plain, unassuming life. Willie (Michael Broughton), her on-again, off-again boyfriend of the past eight years or so, has bigger plans.
 
Specifically, he wants to rob a bank and he wants Esther to help.  Willie is a swaggeringly self-confident, middle-aged produce-store employee with high ambitions and a bad back, but he’s not too bright.  He comes up with an ill-conceived plan for the robbery.  As Esther counters, “Even if you do wrong, you gotta do it right.”
 
Not that the scheme she comes up with is much better.  In fact, it may be even worse because of its convoluted details.  Esther isn’t a robber at heart, after all.  The focus isn’t on the scheme, it’s on the schemers.
 
Esther and Willie are an appealing but dysfunctional duo, and it’s simultaneously easy to see how they got together and why they’ve never tied the knot.
 
Most of the play relies on the dialogue between the two characters, although there are are also a few bursts of slapstick.
 
For much of the play, the couple pace back and forth on a Los Angeles street in front of a bank, debating their plans, whether they should go through with the robbery, why they put up with each other and so on.
 
Their conversations have the circular flow of a couple who have been together a long time and know how to push each others’ buttons.  Joyce and Broughton bring an easy chemistry to their performances– which is good, considering they have the only two speaking roles in the entire play.