Shelter Inn Place

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Henry Feldman’s Shelter Inn Place has a classic premise: hotel manager Frank Bennett just wants to lock up Pelican Bay, his Gulf bed and breakfast, get away from Hurricane Claudia, a category 3 storm, and start a new life. Unfortunately, a great many people he doesn’t wish to see descend on his inn and keep him from closing: his suicidal father George who was snug in his own home where Frank had already boarded up the windows, his 20-year-old son Sam who ought to be at college but has a big favor to ask, his ex-wife of six months ago Mildred who has been dumped by her Swedish pool boy paramour, and an unexpected guest, Heidi Murphy, a celebrated television psychologist looking for a rest, but has stumbled into the wrong hotel from her reservation. As the storm forces them all to shelter in place, Frank, a people-pleaser, finds himself catering to all of these people’s needs and problems, with no time for himself.

The major problem with director Joan Kane’s production is that the play is too slow and sluggish, needing to be faster and more breakneck. As a result, the jokes don’t land as the audience has too much time to think about them and we never believe that the characters are worried about the impending storm. Also the acting is so exaggerated that the actors seem over the top rather than overwrought and stressed out. She has also allowed each actor to be one dimensional making the play rather hollow and artificial: Frank is harried, George is melancholy, Sam is randy, Mildred is flamboyant and Heidi is depressed.

As to the plotting, each piece of stage business goes on too long; more events are needed. This is basically a farce but not staged at farce tempo or  having enough mishaps to keep it going. Although we hear enough about the approaching storm from the periodic radio reports, the characters do not get upset enough about it. No one seems ready to take cover. It takes the whole first act for Frank to finish boarding up the windows.

The sound design by Ian Wehrle is mostly evident when the door is opened while the storm rages and a few leaves and branches blow into the room. Evan Frank’s bland but attractive lobby setting doesn’t do anything that one would expect in a storm – or a farce (i.e. no pictures fall off the wall, no windows break, etc.) The lights by Bruce A! Kraemer go out but we are left wondering where the glow that allows us to continue to see the actors is supposed to come from: moonlight? Billed as a comedy, there are only about four jokes that get a reaction from the audience; speeding up the pace might make a lot of the dialogue seem much funnier.

Mike Roche is rather tame as Frank, worn-down by his unsatisfying life, while Revere as his father fails to make his suicide attempts humorous (this is a comedy, after all.) Aaron Lamm as 20-year-old Sam seems much too bouncy to be a college student, more like a high school teenager. Alyssa Simon’s celebrity TV psychiatrist is much too mannered for this kind of comedy, while Haley Zale as the errant wife is more bombastic than jaunty and vivacious. Although these five characters keep interacting, the stage often seems underpopulated as so little is going on.

Shelter Inn Place is based on the author’s experiences in Houston during Hurricane Ike in 2008, spending two weeks without power with his wife, his aging father and his demanding college age twins from afar. Unfortunately, he has not gotten much humor out of the situation nor does the play tell us much about human relationships. Clichés and stereotypes abound in what should have been a sharp depiction of people stuck with each other under great duress in an absurd situation. Chaplin and Ionesco both would have known how to make this material hilarious.

Shelter Inn Place (through October 4, 2026)

Ego Actus and Feldman Productions LLC

Theatre 5 at Theatre Row, 410 W. 42nd Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.shelterinnplace.com

Running time: two hours including one intermission