So just who’s play-acting in LAB’s ‘Cooler’?

In poker, the word “cooler” refers to a strong hand, virtually unbeatable, that through a series of circumstances renders its holder the ultimate loser.

There’s a lot of posturing, bluffing and sly card sharkery of the darkest kind in Cooler, the new play by Craig Houk in its world premiere production at LAB Theatre in Tampa.

Wade Henry and Jack Dunn are old friends who happen to be actors – together at Wade’s home, they’re having a reunion over whisky and poker. Despite the Oscars, Tonys and other trophies of their illustrious past, they’re both slightly worse for wear and looking for work.

In fact, they’re fighting for work.

The Washington, D.C.-based Houk, whose drama SYD was a highlight of LAB’s 2024 season, refers to the “toxic masculinity” in the room as the two longtime pals (and rivals) get past the pleasantries and expose their selfishness, fears and insecurities.

He wrote it at the request of an actor friend who didn’t know what he was in for.

“I said OK, but I’m going to write a play about two actors of a certain age, with inflated egos,” Houk said. “So this is what I wrote.” Developing Wade and Jack turned into pure pleasure. “I fell in love with the script as I was writing it.”

Directed by Katie Calahan, Cooler – the title actually has multiple meanings – turns in on itself in the second act. Initially, Houk said, it was to be a one-act play, but he was inspired by the ghost story in the drama Grey House, which he saw on Broadway. So he kept writing.

The LAB production stars Kyle Stone as Wade, and Jason Hoolihan as Jack. Giving intense, multi-layered performances, they’re both onstage virtually the whole show. Cooler plays out in real time, over the course of one night, with no scene changes; the second act, following intermission, picks up precisely where the first ended.

“That,” Houk pointed out, “is one of the things I do a lot. In SYD, the first scene takes up most of Act One. It’s all in real time.

“I think that’s more interesting for the audience. There’s no stopping. And I think it’s also a challenge for the actors to have to carry that through.”

Cooler, despite its tragic underpinnings, is a dark comedy. Wade and Jack are caricatures. “I love dark humor,” Houk said. “And oftentimes the humor just comes out of what I’m writing. And my goal is to entertain, so I think it’s more fun for the audience when there’s these moments of tension, and all of a sudden something ridiculous happens, or there’s a slight turn that’s amusing. Or the characters just say something that’s out of left field. I don’t know that I do it intentionally; it just kind of evolves as I write.”

Calahan explained that she enjoys work on new, previously-unproduced works. She has a blank slate, a tabula rasa, as a starting point.

Moving two people, like chess pieces, around a single room for 90 minutes, avoiding arrythmia and keeping things natural-looking, is a welcome challenge.

“I love their relationship onstage,” she said. “It really grew.”

The blocking, Calahan added, “starts on paper for me. There’s a lot of math to it. There are moments when they’re on an extreme diagonal, where they’re on a short diagonal, when they’re on a triangle, when they’re inversing the triangle, when one’s backing the other one into a corner … on paper first. And then my talented actors start coming alive in the moment. And we feel where it needs to adjust.

“But it’s like, the music was there – we just had to decide how long to hold the note.”

Playwright Houk had neither music nor math in mind when he came up with Cooler.

As a reformed actor, he only had to look inward.

“When Jack tells the story about him freezing onstage, that was me,” Houk reveals. “That entire monologue was based on an actual experience that I had as an actor. It was one of the most devastating things that ever happened in my life. And that was the last play I ever did. I actually quit after that.

“This is why I became a writer. It was like, ‘I have to be in the theater, but I can’t be onstage.’”

For showtimes and tickets, visit the LAB website.