"There's no purpose, no redeeming qualities, it exists just to make people laugh. Any larger meaning is purely coincidental."

- Rob Foster

So far, 2006 is agreeing with Rob Foster. In addition to this weekend's world premiere opening of his fifth play, a romantic comedy called "Just Lovely," the local actor playwright and artist is still basking in the afterglow of the success of his first animated short--a retelling of the infamously crude "Aristocrats" joke, which won a national contest thrown by the producers of 2005's "The Aristocrats."
_"It's been a good start to the year." Foster admits. "Hopefully it's the beginning of something bigger."
Foster describes Just Lovely as a "very light" story about "dueling psychos."
_"It's as complex and simple as that," he says. "It's not something the audience will have to struggle to grasp. There's no purpose, no redeeming qualities, it exists just to make people laugh. Any larger meaning is purely coincidental."
_Although he sees it as a sequel to his 1998 comedy "Guy Things," another satirical take on dating and relationships, Foster considers Just Lovely much funnier and tighter.
The story of Just Lovely is incited by the Date.com.
_"The website automatically pairs you up with people who are like you," Foster says. "This, of course, doesn't bode well for people who are psychotic. The two characters try to out-psycho each other before coming to their senses and breaking things off. Unfortunately fate brings them back together at a boss's party."
_Foster says he has always been fascinated why men and women tolerate each other.
"It's a necessary evil, I guess," he says. "We all need love like we need food, water and air. Some people resent that, some grin and bear it."
_Foster traces the modern problem of male and female relationships to an increasing number of individuals who act as "havens of self-gratification."
_"People are being programmed to be islands unto themselves," Foster says. "We're getting away from truths like the fact that we need each other. We're buying into this fiction that we're all self-contained. Ultimately this kind of mentality is doomed to failure because as humans, in loneliness, we can never be happy."

Alec Head, Deborah Curtis

PRODUCTION NOTES
There are a few "fun facts" about Just Lovely that
bear a mention.

* The play was originally slated for 2004, but the actors we wanted were tied up with other shows. We tried waiting for everyone's schedule to clear, but no. As a result, to keep the theater slot, we chose instead a backup script of mine that could be done with the available resources; a two-man show about Lenny Bruce, that starred Jody Gilmore and myself, called Mr. Bruce, Do You Swear? (More about that show at the "Mr. Bruce" link.) All the pre-production false starts for that earlier attempt of Just Lovely lead to our calling it "The Plan-C Show," which spawned the name of the entire enterprise: Planc Productions.