The subtitle of Leonard D. Goodisman’s new play, Checkoff in the Sun, staged at Eclectic
Theater, is “a comedy about dying.” There’s a very obvious pun in the title and
the flavor of the famous playwright Chekhov permeating the play. Goodisman
says, “The pun just sort of popped out when (my character) Victoria asks, ‘Why
did you come here, just to check me off a list?’”
Goodisman’s subject is Victoria, a woman who is in the end
stages of dealing with cancer, yet still in control of her decisions and
desires. Victoria calls together her family and best friends to a villa in the
Southwestern desert. It’s a Palm Springs or Tucson type property that her real
estate friend hasn’t sold yet. Though they really shouldn’t be in the property,
they accept her wish and travel to this destination to say goodbye and resolve
what they can of loose ends, things unsaid, broken moments unmended.
Yet, there is a lot of humor woven into the play. Goodisman,
who says he is a fan of Chekhov, reminds that Chekhov thought of himself as a
humorist. He says that the leading figure of Russian theater, Stanislavski,
chose to direct The Cherry Orchard as
a tragedy, and “Chekhov stood for that and it’s been done as a tragedy ever
since. I see the comedy in all his plays.”