San Diego Reader

Mike Buckley's lite, entertaining romantic comedy has one of theater's more conflicted villains. Samm, short for Samantha, means ill, but is new at her work as a "hit man" and tends to become personally involved. The real villain, in this world premiere at Lamb's Players, is the hospital that convinced Susan, owner of an antique shop in San Francisco, that she's dying of cancer. Susan hires Samm for a whack job so Susan's brother can use the insurance for graduate work at Stanford. When Susan mistakes Sam, a travel agent, for Samm, complications unfold in a briskly paced show (the pace moves almost fast enough to blur some flimsy causes, plus Samm's cruelty to animals). Buckley's a triple threat: he wrote the script, he plays Sam, and he designed the prop-rich set. At first sight, Susan's antique shop looks too cramped. But Buckley creates several playing spaces amid, at least, 100 chairs, tea kettles, tables, pitchers, rugs, and a cricket bat. Sam says Susan's "bipolar," and Cynthia Peters handles both sides (the comedic and the potentially tragic) with skill. Season Duffy has a lark as Samm, the garrulous villain. Chris Bresky could reign in his physicality, at times, but offers an engaging Steve. His hair a heroic comb-over, his lines neo-Russo-Balkan, David Cochran Heath scores as Slavo, resident thug. The Hit has a thematic subtext: call it "buyer behavior," as half a dozen people (dressed distinctly, by Jeanne Reith, and well performed by Gail West and Paul Malley) enter the store and shop in odd, often funny, ways. (Note: due to popular demand, Lamb's Players has extended the run of The Hit.)