How Paula Fell’s ‘Trust Me’ got the LAB theater treatment

Now onstage at LAB Theatre Project in Tampa, Paula Fell’s Trust Me is the story of a seemingly successful businessman, a local hero, who has a dark side. John Scanlon is in way over his head, and there’s a loan shark circling. He wants his money back and has sent over a threatening goon.

Oh, and Trust Me is jam-packed with laughs.

Fell, director Caroline Jett and LAB founder Owen Robertson conducted a talkback with the sold-out audience March 14, and the playwright wondered aloud whether the show was too serious to be described as a comedy, or too funny to call a drama.

“I think,” Robertson postulated, “you could get away with calling it a comedic thriller.”

Such questions are valid because LAB, which is in the middle of its 10^th season, is a playhouse dedicated to “first-run” productions – in other words, world premieres. It is, in a sense, a laboratory.

Several seasons ago LAB, which receives submissions from all over the country, produced another Paula Fell script, The Rooster’s Tale.

“Having worked with Paula on Rooster’s Tale, which was a delightful play, funny as it could be, as soon as I read this one I said ‘I want to direct it.’ I could see it in my head,” said Jett. “I saw it play out.

“And I think there are (directors) who would not have seen the comedy in it, and would have tried to make it a very straight thriller. There’s so much wonderful comedy in this – I wanted to make sure that came out.”

Talking back: Director Caroline Jett, left, playwright Paula Fell and producer/company founder Owen Robertson. Photo by Bill DeYoung.

In this first-ever production of Trust Me, John Scanlon is played by Rusty Gillespie, his blissfully ignorant wife Rene by Sidney Gogny, and the “hit man” (Lou Acheron, named for the Underworld “River of Woe”) by Michael C. McGreevy.

The actors were all present at the talkback and described, with delight, the pleasure of working on a “fresh” script.

Fell, who’s based in Newport Beach, California, was thrilled. “It’s been such a joy to see my play come to life, at such a high level,” she said. “It’s very hard to get a brand-new play produced. It’s getting harder and harder as time goes by, because theaters are going away, and the ones that stay are nervous about producing new stuff. Because it’s hard to get audiences to come see a new work.”

Although trotting out the old chestnuts is understandable every once in a while, she suggested, to put people in seats, it’s not theatrically stimulating, for anyone. “Then you’re just doing The Odd Couple forever.”

Trust Me, Fell explained, was inspired by a Walmart executive she’d read about. He’d been caught embezzling company funds – and at first, no one had a clue.

Although it was first conceived in 2007, Trust Me went through numerous changes – and improvements – over the years.

And then she felt it was ready to submit to LAB.

“Without companies like us doing what we do you don’t get Arthur Miller, you don’t get Marsha Norman … you don’t get any of the greats of our great masters,” Robertson said. “Because they all went through a company that took a chance on them. You don’t get Hamilton without the Public Theatre taking a chance on it.

“This is why small, regional companies like us, that support and believe in new work, desperately need support. We don’t have huge audiences because we don’t have name recognition. You don’t know the playwright’s name, you don’t know the play.”

He then addressed the audience: “And so it’s really important that word of mouth gets out there for us. Spread the word – talk about us, and talk about what we do and how we’ve done it.”

Trust Me runs Thursdays-Sundays through March 30. Find information and tickets at this link.