As the audience at The Bus Stop Theatre finds its seats, Marta (Claire Seringhaus) paces back and forth across the stage, twisting her hair and checking her cell phone.
By the time Kristin Slaney's Blue Moons and Waiting Rooms begins, a taut atmosphere of waiting has already been established. Characters wait for minds to be made up, for truths to be revealed, and for phones to ring, and down a few shots of Jack Daniel's along the way.
Dreamy Sylvie (Gina Thornhill) is mysteriously unconscious in a hospital bed, while Jeffrey, who is "just a friend" (Shawn Duggan) and Sylvie's tightly wound older sister Marta encounter one another in the waiting room.
Over the course of the play, these three characters drift in and out of one another's orbits. The actors are a pleasure to watch, handling the back and forth movement from present to flashback seamlessly. A nice tension is established as each relationship evolves and is fleshed out. The tender bickering between the two sisters is especially convincing, as is the conflicted romance between Sylvie and Jeffrey. Ultimately, the framing narrative of moon cycles waxing and waning feels somewhat unnecessary, because the characters themselves shine so strongly.
