Avec Schmaltz
by Mart Crowley

This two-act comedic collision seems, at first, like a straightforward romp about marital grumblings.

But there are all sorts of surprising complexities in the failed marriage of Kit, the WASP flame-haired rich girl, and Manny, the wry, wise-cracking Jewish TV composer, which has produced two precocious, sassy children and a situation in which the ex-wife and the ex-husband can't seem to live with each other or without each other.

'Avec Schmaltz' (a phrase European musicians would ironically use to instruct violinists how to emotionally heat-up their romantic string passages) is about this devoted divorced couple, their new partners, and their two glib offspring at holiday time.

It moves from a Currier and Ives winter wonderland of Christmas Eve in Connecticut to a New Year's Eve in sun-drenched Beverly Hills, California.

It concerns the ex-marital couple, their lovers, and would-be-lovers entering and exiting in a farcical, light-hearted, but dead-serious comedy in two acts.

There is no facile resolution to the question of "will-they-or-won't-they?" get back together.

Rather, there is the emotional vitality of people clinging to what relational lifeboats they are tossed in the buoyant excursion called life!