PORTLAND, Maine — Portland Stage Company is now presenting a comedy called “Native Gardens,” and two of the actors in the play have an unswerving approach to playing comedy: Don’t try to be funny.
“There’s a rule about that,” actor Jose-Maria Aguila told us. “[The material] can be funny to the audience. It can’t really be funny to us.” When actors get hammy or stagey or start playing their roles too broadly, the laughter dies.
The story in “Native Gardens” revolves around two couples in Washington, D.C. A Chilean lawyer and his pregnant American wife buy a home next to a set-in-their-ways elderly couple who take their English garden very seriously. “Cultures and gardens clash over a fence line that spirals into an all-out border dispute,” and the story unfolds. Aguila and actress Laura Houck, who has performed in many stage productions in Maine, joined us to talk about the show.