New Colony Delivers a Winner With “Kate and Sam Are Not Breaking Up”

“Kate and Sam Are Not Breaking Up” is The New Colony’s original production now making its premiere at Flat Iron Arts Center. The story follows desperate fanboy Bill (Rob Grabowski), who believes he is helping the celebrity onscreen/offscreen couple of a tween sci-fi saga when he drugs and kidnaps them. The scene opens as the groggy movie stars find themselves in Bill’s filthy nerd cave, bound and gagged.

Kate (Mary Williamson) and Sam (Nick Delehanty) have spent years in the lead roles of the screen adaptation of a popular book series. However, their real-life romance and personal demons are often the more intriguing storyline to their fans and the media. Lucky for the couple, despite his apparent indifference to the law and bit of an unstable personality, Bill is a pretty nice guy. And, as it turns out, no where near as nutty as his 16-year friend Becky (Stephanie Shum), for whom he has kidnapped the couple.

Becky represents the narcissistic blogger and internet personality – not in short supply these days – that personifies the celebrity worship of the two actors. However, she quickly goes from a teen with an obvious attention deficit disorder to a real psycho beatch when the couple fails to take her love intervention seriously. While Kate and Sam believe their relationship is behind them, Becky has different plans for the ex-lovers.

Grabowski is well cast as Bill and injects a fair amount of both the both comedy and the darkness into the play. Much of his humor is self deprecating and he is at times a sympathetic character. Anyone who can relate to Becky needs to get a life, but Shum again seems hard to beat in her role. She never missed a beat delivering Becky’s rambling thoughts that spew from her mouth at machine-gun pace. Williamson and Delehanty play intriguing characters – all be it if they aren’t stupid then they expose some serious plot holes with their inability to escape. At one point the two appear to be left behind with the door unlocked and instead of walking out, sit and discuss what to do when Bill gets back. Lucky for the audience, they miss their chance to escape and we all get joyfully sucked into a well-paced, comedic ripped-from-the-tabloids-headlines story about another celebrity romance that we really shouldn’t give a crap about.

“Kate and Sam” runs through Dec. 14 at Flat Iron Arts Building, 1579 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago. Tickets are $20 ($10 senior/student) and curtain is 7:30 p.m., Thursday – Saturday. Tickets can be purchased at www.thenewcolony.org. For theatre information, visit www.theatreinchicago.com.