Swing Low! With Theatre Southeast BREAK Magazine
Review by A.C. Osterman

Swing Low! transports you to a world in which people shoot at catfish with shotguns, the words “pool business” are taboo, and a bride screams out to “Hit play!” so she can descend the stairs to the sound of Pachelbel’s “Canon in D Major.” Scary? Welcome to typical family life and the perpetual crisis that comes with it.
Florida State University’s Theatre Southeast presents the premiere of Swing Low!, a play written by FSU alum David Caudle. If you attend, don’t be surprised to see the actors carrying scripts. This is a staged reading, but, given the circumstances, the story flows well and the actors give solid performances.
A quick rundown? Fifteen-year-old Chase wakes up to see his father’s ghost materialize as the figure on top of a bowling trophy, his uncle’s head in hand as the bowling ball. Why this immense effort to transcend the beyond? To stop the wedding between the uncle and the father’s beautiful widow, of course! To complicate matters, the uncle infiltrated the father’s business just before his recent suicide, and, 20 years prior to that, at the father’s wedding, he admired the bride and thought, “That should be mine.” Sound familiar? Change “pool and spa business” to “monarchy” and it just might ring of a certain melancholy Dane.
But Swing Low! takes an interesting spin on Hamlet. It does what Hamlet doesn’t and focuses on the uncle and the widow. It also adds a character missing in Hamlet—the grandfather, who flat-out tells the uncle, “It ain’t right.” Although it appears predictable at first, Swing Low! manages to turn the whole situation on its head, and if you’re aware of its roots, that makes it all the better.
Although Caudle does work interesting and subtle ties to Hamlet into Swing Low!, his real strength lies in his take on religion. Pastor Allgood is classic. What is that? Why yes, that is a porno magazine on the good pastor’s desk! Sex and religion work together like never before in this great character, who is sleazy enough to comment to the son about his mother’s glorious “set of principles” and to express his happiness that he has a podium to stand behind when he preaches.
Allgood carries the best dialogue in the play, with such lines as, “The Catholics—they’re against everything from sodomy to stamp collecting.” He doubts Chase’s story about the father’s ghostly visit, and says casually, “Angels don’t care what happens on earth!” You just can’t beat this glowing icon of doctrinal morality.
But what suffered? The women, and the humor when the play ventures toward slapstick. Although some guy in a Hawaiian shirt laughed every time characters sprayed air freshener to cover up what they believed to be the grandfather’s gastric problems, the play could do without the whole bit. (Even if it means giving up the sight of a dead, smelly cat hurled like a softball later in the play—and that is quite the moment.) When the grandfather says he feels “like some old coat rack you can’t find the right corner for.” I can’t help but agree. He captures the essence of his place in the plot with that little line.
Sure, the widow and bride-to-be, Livvy, is the hero, since she embodies the best values in the play (good intentions and forgiveness), and she eventually learns a lesson: Self-sacrifice isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But women on the whole get the short end of the stick. The most opinionated and potentially strong woman character, the fortune-teller Madame Andreadoria, is all too willing to pursue and accept a man who is blatantly settling for her. She also gets lines that are nothing compared to her counterpart, the pastor.
Don’t get me wrong. I like the vibrant character of Andreadoria. It’s just that she seems to slow down after her killer introduction, when she announces in her flamboyant voice that she is “Switchboard to the spirits!” while in exercise gear and on her lunch hour.
Some scenes may fall a little flat for meaning, and you may find yourself wondering “Do they really need the grandfather in there at all?” The ending may be a little too sitcomy and feel-good (Good God! Please tell me they aren’t going to break out into song!), but Swing Low! definitely has spirit and punch.
What with jokes about morning woodies (“It catches the sun’s first rays for Christ’s sake!”) and cracks that make you absolutely cringe (how crème-filled doughnuts “taste of things to come” for the bride-to-be), Swing Low! is damn funny. You could say Caudle is a playwright who could learn a lot from his own good work, and shows much promise as an artist.