By MIKE DUNHAM
Wonder of the World: Julie-Joy Voss as Cass, consults her life list while Daisy Bouchard as Lois, nurses her death-wish. Photo: Anita Algiene
The play is the thing, said Shakespeare, and we rightly pay close attention to new scripts as get their premieres. But the play is nothing without players.

In the past month we’ve seen the debuts of some well-written and even profound theatrical writing hobbled by acting that was not up to snuff.

Two more plays receiving their first performances in Anchorage are now running which — while not as deep or intellectually successful as “Heart” (produced by Anchorage Community Theater) or “Afterlife of the Mind” (at Out North) — nonetheless shine thanks to all-round splendid performances.

“Wonder of the World,” by David Lindsay-Abaire, is a basic farce. Cass (Julie-Joy Voss), a vacuous young wife incapable of stringing two consecutive thoughts together, becomes disgusted with the sexual secret of her wimpy husband (Nathan Huey) and takes the bus to Niagra Falls to reinvent herself with help from a “life-list” that she composed before she married him. En route she pals up with alcoholic Lois (Daisy Bouchard), also shuffling off to Buffalo to shuffle off her mortal coil by throwing herself over the falls in a barrel.

Checking off one new experience after another from her list, Cass has a fling with tour boat captain Mike (Alex Pierce). But a bumbling wife-and-husband pair (Alex Craft and Mike Hidalgo), hired by Kip, track down the runaway bride. Kip races to her hotel to win her back with assistance from a whacky couples counselor (Alyssa Barnes).

The playwright flirts with big life issues of identity, destiny, trying something different, wanting to become a new person. The nuptial souvenirs that Kip parades past Cass are, as she declares, “just stuff;” but so — in the light of day — are the items on her ridiculous life list.
Nothing here is very deep. Alcoholism, infidelity, even deaths are all dealt with as plain comedy.

But the comedy is deftly handled by the performers whose timing, mugging and character projection stay on target. The laughs came every minute until late in the second act, when it appears the author struggled with how to keep up the tempo and wrap up the business.
But many of the individual scenes make up for the make-shift ending. Kip’s solo wordless and teary cut-aways, a brilliantly hilarious three-in-one melange with various characters in separate and preposterous theme restaurants, the final therapy session with the facilitator showing up in clown attire — these are some of the more indelible moments of theater experienced in Anchorage so far this year.

Even the scene changes hold your attention. Director Frances Covais Lautenberger has the UAA technical crew whipping out props and sets on the Mainstage space with speed and precision that amounts to its own sideshow.
Tuesdays with Morrie: The whole cast. Jamie Lang Photography.
Meanwhile, at Cyrano’s, a very different play succeeds on similar grounds. Mitch Albom’s best selling 1997 book “Tuesdays with Morrie,” about the death of his old sociology professor Morrie Schwartz from Lou Gehrig’s disease, was, of necessity, somewhat on the maudlin side. It might have been titled “How Mitch Learned to Cry.”

The play is less maudlin for a couple of reasons. First, it’s tightly presented in a single 90-minute act with just two speaking characters. The economy of theater leaves less room for sentimentality, or at least compresses it. Though stage action is minimal, director Bernie Blaine keeps a sense of movement going with ongoing and effective small gestures.

Second, seeing Schwartz’s observations come from a human being rather than off the printed page automatically enlivens what is, ostensibly, a meditation on death.

That’s where the actors come in. This two-hander is a marathon for the performers — Dich Reichman as Morrie and Patrick Killoran as Mitch. But they have their lines down pat. The humor is credibly delivered, the exchanges are crisp and realistic, turns where poignancy might slide into pathos are deftly modulated to sustain the emotional edge on a rationally calculated course.

Both plays continue through the end of the month. Both teams of players are well worth taking the time to see.

THE WONDER OF THE WORLD will be presented at 3 p.m. Sun. and 8 p.m. Fri. and Sat. through Feb. 28 at UAA’s Mainstage Theatre in the Fine Arts Building. Tickets are $13 general, $18 reserved at centertix.net.

TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE continues at 3 p.m. Sun. and 7 p.m. Thurs.-Sat. through Feb. 28 at Cyrano’s, 413 D. St. Tickets are $16 at centertix.net.