Staff Photo By: Darcie Thom

Albert Brock (Bernard Steele) shares his most deepest, inner thoughts during his session with psychiatrist Victor Karleen (Gerard Hengen) during the Windthorst Little Theatre production of ‘Meanwhile Back On The Couch’.

Staff Photo By: Darcie Thom

Charlotte Hennebon (Brenda Larsen) and Gabrielle Wingate (Susanne Andres) read what they thought was the doctor’s spicy script.

Staff Photo By: Darcie Thom

Dr. Karleen (Gerard Hengen) holds Dorothea Melnik (Carmelita Krull) at bay from the unwanted advances that she is so willing to give.

By: Darcie ThomThe evening was full of ‘crazy’events and scripted love, something that could have been part of a best selling romance novel to ever reach the shelves of a book store, or at least that’s what the audience was brought to believe through a note of excitement by the actors.

‘Meanwhile Back On The Couch’, produced by special arrangement with Samuel French Inc. and performed by the Windthorst Little Theatre under the direction of Yvonne Hengen, indulged the audience with twists and turns of the ‘appealing’ lifestyle of a psychiatrist, his fiancé, publisher, and his many guests throughout a two-day fiasco of love, drama and laughter.

Dr. Victor Karleen (Gerard Hengen), a psychiatrist and would-be novelist trying to pay his rent and maintain his own sanity welcomes a new patient with a ten-day old problem to his office, Albert Brock(Bernard Steele) who, after unveiling his ‘problem’ was just what the doctor ordered. Charlotte Hennebon (Brenda Larsen), a nurse and receptionist employed by Dr. Karleen slips in and out of the office welcoming patients and through assisting her boss, finds herself wrapped up in a love script in which she assumes to be by her employer. She and Parker Donnelly (Brad Dew), Karleen’s publisher, find themselves waiting for the next chapter, later involving Gabrielle Wingate (Susanne Andres), an interior decorator and the picture perfect fiancé to Karleen.

Karleen’s competition, Roy Terrigan (Hubert Krull), an unpleasant and shady psychiatrist and fellow novelist breaks confidentiality with a former patient to warn Karleen of a new patient, the troubled Ms. Melnik.

With laughter already being heard throughout the audience, the Windthorst Little Theatre and actors managed to raise the laughter meter up a knotch when Brock’s troubled grandmother, Dorothea Melnik (Carmelita Krull) came for her session dressed in a sexy ‘playboy’ outfit wearing her 1929 beauty contest sash. Later in the play, the audience was introduced to the neighbor lady Jingle Jabonski (Marissa Jones), a believer in love at first sight, while on her scavenger hunt for something shiny and green.

Twists and turns led the audience to the very visible ‘naked truth’ provided by the talents (and bravery) of the actors who portrayed the characters.

Children in hysterics sat in the first two front rows and visitors who shared the same laughter attended the final night performance on Monday, November 24th.