<b>THE HATMAKER'S WIFE</b> Maxine and Robert Seller Theatre/Jewish Repertory Theatre SpeakupWNY | Buffalo NY and Buffalo News

Through May 25
THE HATMAKER�S WIFE Maxine and Robert Seller Theatre/Jewish Repertory Theatre

By Augustine Warner.

Weird.
That�s the best description of Lauren Yee�s �The Hatmaker�s Wife,� a convoluted, overlapping, Jewish mystical story built around a house with talking walls, housing a resident golem, occupied by a young couple moving in together from an apartment, apparently in New York City, to the house once occupied by a hatmaker and his wife.
I seldom say so, but this relatively short and long one-act play could be a few minutes longer and better explain the background to the events.
The central character is the hatmaker, Hechtman (Jack Hunter), who loses both his hat and his wife.
The hatmaker�s wife (Pamela Mangus) leaves behind a husband who is incapable of taking care of himself, demonstrated by the growing pile of debris surrounding his chair, which is central to Chris Cavanagh�s set, and Hechtman�s body odor.
The tale of the missing wife is parallel to the dangling relationship of Voice (Renee Hawthorne) and Gabe (David Wysocki), the newly living together couple.
They seem unable to establish the relationship inherent in moving in together, into a large house.
She�s hung up on her highly technical job and the sheets of paper telling a story of the house, a story Gabe isn�t interested in.
Pages of the house�s historical saga periodically fall from the ceiling, perhaps fed by the voice.
The hatmaker�s only friend appears to be Meckel (Peter Palmisano), apparently a neighbor who can be counted on to wander through the probably unlocked door and make Hechtman feel worse.
Meckel is also prone to having his nose plugged to deal with Hechtman�s body odor.
Director Steve Vaughan has both halves of the home�s ownership on stage together much of the time, without their conversations and lives crossing over.
Neither principal character strikes me as someone I would like to hang around with, since both Hechtman and Voice appear too bound up in themselves to even carry on a strong conversation.
Applying his decades in theater, Hunter seizes the stage every time he�s out there in that chair.
Hawthorne less so, perhaps because she spends so much time off in one corner of the stage reading the falling pages and looking at the technical writing coming from her job.
Definitely a troubled relationship with Gabe.
We see two different conclusions in those two different relationships.
The conclusions are to be expected in the flow of the story.
At the same time, there is a very deep connection between the two teams of residents, something we learn at the very end which ties everything together.
Plausibly?
Maybe not.
It�s all interesting.
There are some flaws in the tale, including Hunter taking the strength of his character and strengthening it even further, skewing the flow.
He�s wonderful.
Hawthorne tries but the character is difficult and annoying.
Hechtman�s wife is a much smaller part, although you do wonder why she hangs on for so long.
You also wonder about: why Meckel? Although Palmisano is very good.
�The Hatmaker�s Wife� has so much potential, so little seen.

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