Sweitzer inhabits over a dozen characters in this play entitled "20 Seconds: A Play with Music," albeit two of them are him when young and him telling us the story now…two people he knows intimately. He is never so broad as to suggest caricature. His female characters are vibrant and flesh-and-blood enough for you to suspend disbelief that you aren’t actually seeing his mom Kathy, and Erdean, and Ms. Ruth, the fleabag hotel manager, and Denise, the girl next door, and finally his creation, Vivian Delgrosso, a drag homage to the Italian women his mom’s age. He brings the same depth to his male characters, with the masterpiece being his sadistic, yet eventually repentant father Tom.
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“While ’20 Seconds’ almost feels like an advertisement for his non-profit organization, it’s really an affirmation of why he makes music and how one man can build a better future.”
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Sweitzer does a decent job of capturing his autobiographical selections, but the material, for all its sincere inspirational goals, is not especially interesting, illuminating, unique, funny, or, sad to say, inspirational. His acting covers the spectrum from buffoonery to sentimentality to operatic Weltschmerz, but the personalities he introduces are mundane, and, occasional ripples of laughter aside, the comedy tends toward flatness.
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The story starts out fairly generic and universal, then strays down a dark path of increasing specificity as Sweitzer enumerates unique, haunting detail. Every time Sweitzer sat at the piano, I was expecting musical brilliance. He instead confined himself repertoire that was simple and generic. Sweitzer chose easy pieces, hammering home the idea that music therapy is accessible to everyone. The disappointing nature of the music selections limited my ability to enjoy the show.
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