The malodorous play that you canʼt avoid

Dark comedy ʻCheeseʼ debuts for the Pierce audience

BRITTANY HENDERSON

Features Editor @BrittanyJanai

One of the uses for cheese is normally on a burger, but for Playwright and Director Laurel Ollstein, she takes the meaning of cheese into a symbolic direction.

Pierce College’s Theater Department held its debut performance of the play “Cheese,” which lived up to its description as a pungent comedy March 27, 2015 at 8 p.m. in the Performing Arts Building.

Cheese had two acts and was published by Original Works Publishing in 2010.

The stage was intimate and was close enough for any of the eight cast members to touch the audience.

To match the theme of a 70s-style home, the props and setup were done perfectly. It was a living room with brown wooden walls, a small brown couch, and wooden shelves that gave off a “Brady Bunch” vibe. There were 10 props that stood out on the stage and served as a reminder to the most important theme of the play, cheese.

Carefully placed on shelves and tables throughout the staged living room were yellows statues that were meant to represent sculptures made of cheese. The name of the play had two meanings that tied into a physical and emotional aspect. The physical aspect was the fact that cheese sculptures were visually on stage and represented the odd obsession of one of the characters, Griffin, played by Vincent Cusimano.

The emotional aspect symbolized that if there are years of denial, lies, and secrecy then just like the food cheese, it will start to smell and rot.

The character, Jesse, played by Trevor Alkazian, gave the audience the setup to his family and life only to start the play in a shocking manner with an obscene word that definitely was an attention grabber.

The rest of the dark comedy stayed consistent and had a highlighted comedic relief throughout the play by charismatic