At one point, in Matthew Ivan Bennett’s A French Toast, Lucy goes into an emotional frenzy. She unwittingly consumed alcohol, which shocks her with fear that she has broken the rules of her Mormon faith and is no longer worthy. Of course, it happened at the reception for her former husband’s gay wedding. At the sunny bed and breakfast inn in the south of France, where she is staying, she tells Gabriel, the owner, “I’m usually the belle of the ball.” Her tirade has embarrassed her daughter, Cassie, who meanwhile has set her eyes on Yasmin, another guest at the inn. Gabriel tells Lucy he understands: “I’ve seen it all. They have lots of weddings at the palace and lots of people who stay here have broken hearts.”
He insists that she has no need to feel so ashamed as to leave the inn. Gabriel is consciously trying to suppress his own melancholy feelings, but he also is intrigued when Lucy tells him, “I can see why you think that’s who I am, based on today, but that’s totally not me. I’m actually a woman of immense calm. And compassion. And benevolence.” Indeed, when Gabriel later tells her how his own marriage ended in a shocking discovery, one can see how skillfully Bennett has allowed the seeds of romance to germinate for what seemed an unlikely coupling.
The premiere of A French Toast, directed by Jason Bowcutt, meets its splendid promise of the rom-com genre in the Meanwhile Park outdoor theatrical venue. Despite some moments when pacing and rhythm slackened (which naturally should tighten up by the end of this production on July 19), the chamber theater ensemble snapped into solid performances, most notably with April Fossen as Lucy and Matthew Sincell as Gabriel. Their instincts are wisely chosen in every dimension of their performances.
No question, the emerging romance between Gabriel and Lucy is more interesting with some subtly ironic epiphanies that shape Bennett’s broader narrative arc than the one kindling between Cassie, Lucy’s daughter (played effectively by Ali Lente who telegraphs some of Cassie’s less appealing personality features), and Yasmin, a Black British lesbian who is quite the literary scholar but is also refreshingly grounded (interpreted with proper understatement by Darby Mest).
Bennett’s A French Toast is a richer companion to his earlier rom-com, From June to August, which was awarded the inaugural Meanwhile Park Playwright Prize in 2023. That play’s narrative centered on individuals who are middle aged, a demographic usually overlooked in the rom-com genre. June was a divorcée who still felt the painful stings of her breakup with a serial cheating husband while August was a widower still figuring out how to move from grief and mourning back to a social scene. In From June to August, the two other characters were supportive sidekicks to the respective leads and they provided much of the comic fodder in the script.
As Bennett did then, he hits on all of the elements that make a successful rom-com story in A French Toast. As The Utah Review noted previously, it is a genre built almost entirely on clichés about romance but it also lends itself well to writers who understand that practically anything is fair game in the genre.
In this play, Bennett expands upon this impressively, with the pair of romances germinating but each doing so with different dynamics. As unlikely as it appears at the outset, one eventually anticipates that Lucy and Gabriel likely will find harmony quicker than Cassie and Yasmin, both of whom are a generation younger. In fact, Lucy (which Fossen, per her usual performance standards, zeros in with excellent impact upon finer points) tells us illuminating things about her daughter. She tells Gabriel, “My friends back at home say they don’t judge us but I can feel them judging us. Me. Cassie. Stephen [the ex-husband]. Even at church.”
She mentions that when Cassie came out as lesbian, the news had “all the subtlety of a Movie of the Week.” Lucy and Gabriel begin to find their resonance, after he tells her how his marriage ended when he discovered his wife in bed with his identical twin brother. It doesn’t happen instantaneously, but Lucy and Gabriel realize that sharing and listening to each other talk about their own inside pains are the ingredients for naturally effective therapy. Fossen and Sincell are at their finest in such scenes and their stage chemistry emphasizes the credibility we expect from these characters.
On the other hand, after Cassie made a move she thought was flirtatious but instead it triggered Yasmin and set her back, one can see that as impulsive as Lucy’s daughter is in criticizing her mother, she actually exhibits similar behaviors. Cassie unloads her own story after Yasmin tells her, “You know you’re more like your mum than you think.”
Lucy, who has just returned from an errand trip with Gabriel, wants to know why Cassie is so upset. The exchange between mother and daughter is revealing. About Lucy attending her ex-husband’s wedding in France, Cassie spares no punches in the verbal sparring: “Yes: you hunna percent would’ve come to infect us with your spite: that’s who you are. I told him not to invite you. I told him he’d regret it — and he did, by the way. I told him, for me, this’d be a living nightmare, and it has been.” Surprisingly, Lucy is understanding how she can see her way out of her emotional crisis. Furthermore, Lucy has even warmed up to Yasmin even if she doesn’t comprehend everything. Now, it is Cassie who must try to reconcile her own inner anger, especially if she wants to pursue a meaningful relationship with Yasmin.
As in From June to August, the four characters in A French Toast endure troublesome complications that will push them together and pull them apart, setting up the test to find out whether or not their relationship could work. Bennett’s formula works blending a lot of summer humor with realities that usually become evident when the nights grow longer and the warm days give way to gray, chilly ones. The actors acknowledge these dynamics in their performances.
Meanwhile Park is an enjoyable evening of outdoor theater with hospitality par excellence. The mood for the performance of the 64-minute play is set an hour before the sun goes down and the July heat wanes to a tolerable level, as patrons can enjoy wine, beer or cocktails, along with an artfully curated snack pack. Founder Jeff Paris has solidified one of Salt Lake City’s most innovative independent arts spaces as a venue for excellent productions such as A French Toast.
The production continues through July 19. For tickets and more information, see the Meanwhile Park website.