The two main characters in "Sunshine," William Mastrosimone's gritty and darkly funny one-act play that closes the season for Dark & Stormy Productions, have a manic edge to them.
The title character (Sara Marsh) is an exotic dancer who looks like she's gotten a bad batch of street drugs. We see her knocking urgently on a door, bobbing around with one foot bare, the other in a high heel.
It turns out Sunshine, battered and bruised, is fleeing an abusive husband. She takes refuge in the apartment of Nelson (Nels Lennes), a paramedic who appears to be quietly suffering from PTSD. He's curt and brusque, with little sympathy for a woman he initially regards as a prostitute. His jaundiced view of the world comes from seeing too many people dead or dying.
But these two souls, roiled by their psychological traumas, have more in common than it seems. Their trades both involve the human heart.
Sunshine works the fantasies of lonely men, including Robby (Tony Sarnicki), a feral college student. She knows the right things to say to the simple saps who are her regulars, even if her sweet nothings are generic and false.
Nelson helps to resuscitate accident victims, bringing them back to life — however diminished that existence may be. He wonders if it might be more merciful to let some of them die.
Sunshine and Nelson could be a match, in short, except for the fact that each is married to someone else who is, literally and figuratively, out of the picture.
Director Mel Day staged Mastrosimone's "Extremities" this summer for the same company with visceral impact. That show, about a would-be rape victim who turns the tables on her attacker, indicted larger societal issues, including violence against women and the practice of putting victims on trial.
