In the spectrum of insanity, can there ever really be a line drawn between therapist and those in therapy?

Anyone who's ever wondered exactly what it means to be a little over the edge might find a few answers in the Student Players' performance of Christopher Durang's "Beyond Therapy" this week.

The play tangles patients and doctors together in an indistinguishable twirl and quite a quirky little love story. Bruce (Chris Nygren) and Prudence (Tara Murphy), two thirty-something singles in search of love, begin to try out personal ads when their love lives refuse to work out to any sort of satisfaction. Prudence, an uptight perfectionist working for People Magazine, is not entirely sure Mr. Right exists, since Leonardo DiCaprio is too young for her. Bruce, who cries at the slightest provocation, compliments Prudence on her breasts almost immediately, and has not yet worked out the situation with his live-in male lover Bob (Paul Sifuentes), hardly makes a good first impression. But when Prudence accidentally answers another of Bruce's ads and meets him in the same bizarre restaurant where the waiter (David Buckley) never gives the couple service, she decides to give the romance a try.

Bruce and Prudence don't seem to be having any more luck getting help from their therapists than from the suspiciously absent waiter at the restaurant. Charlotte (Candace Adams), Bruce's psychologist, can barely formulate a sentence, let alone remember the details of her patients' lives. Stuart (Jake Imm) is too busy trying to put the moves on Prudence to offer her any kind of insightful advice.

Though Bruce and Prudence struggle with their therapy, differences and emotional hang-ups, it soon becomes clear that the two have something that draws them together. In the process of trying to decide whether they should get together and how that should happen, all the characters in the play learn a little more about how they want to deal with the world.

"Beyond Therapy" has the same dark but optimistic humor typical of Durang's work. The Yale graduate, once described by former Dean of the Yale School of Drama as a "Catholic lapsarian," doesn't let anyone off the hook of being a bit crazy. Unlike Prudence, who vehemently states that she "see[s] no reason not to be embarrassed at being human," Durang accepts his characters as flawed but ultimately goodhearted.

Durang's humor, ranging from dry to all out slapstick, makes "Beyond Therapy" a fun play not only for the audience but for the actors and director.

"The play's lighthearted and farcical," said director Dan Fisher, a senior art history major. "It's a bit of escapism from schoolwork."

At times the witty word play requires actors to almost be able to read Durang's mind as to what their characters are supposed to be. The cast, featuring some of Notre Dame's most active student actors, generally lives up to the challenge.

"The part [of Charlotte] requires divorcing yourself from logic," said Fisher. "Candace does a fantastic job."

With such convoluted conversations, the actors have had to learn to work well together onstage to connect with each other and with the audience. Working together since early February, the cast has developed a good rapport onstage. The small McKenna hall theater also helps the cast keep the inherently personal play personal.

"I liked that it has such a small cast," said Fisher. "There's a lot of cast chemistry and bonding."

Although the performance is not flawless, "Beyond Therapy" is good for a few laughs and some introspection. Students could do far worse than to spend an evening exploring the confusion of aging, dating, and psychology in the modern world.

• `Beyond Therapy'
  
• Telling it like it is