Theater: “At the Wedding” at LCT

Carlo (Mary Wiseman), the lesbian heroine of “At the Wedding,” Bryna Turner’s mordant comedy, is a W. C. Fields character transposed to the 21st century. She drinks far too much, cracks wise and mean, and is the one guest at a wedding reception you don’t want to be seated next to. “You even made the kids cry…at the kids table!” one guest complains.

At the reception (you never see the actual wedding), Carlo buttonholes a series of guests who all seem to be lesbian ex’s of the bride, or their male beards. These include bisexual Eli (Will Rogers), whose floral-patterned shirt “reveals his anxiety” (as Carlo tells him); Maria (Carolyn McCormick), the mother of the bride who pines that her daughter didn’t marry a woman; Leigh (Han van Sciver), a fellow lesbian who wants Carlo to run away with her (“but just for the night”); and finally Eva (Rebecca S’Manga Frank), the curvy bride who happens to be Carlo’s ex!

Well-written and smarty-pants funny—at one point in the festivities, Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is dissected as a life lesson for Carlo (i.e., that bitterness is boring after a while.) “Never discuss something so deep at a wedding,” she warns. Maybe so. But it does make for an interesting play. At LCT.