'Butler' serves up laughs at Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota

"Butler," the Civil War comedy that's now playing at Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota gets off to a slow start. Almost painfully slow.

A very long first scene, with just the title character and his subordinate, offers only a few scattered chuckles and a tiny bit of exposition, but it goes on and on. And on.

It'd be easy to think you're in for a long evening of theater. The play, a somewhat fact-based story about controversial Civil War Gen. Benjamin Butler (played here by Eric Hoffman) sheltering runaway slaves in his Virginia fort, is just plain boring, and awkwardly staged by director Jason Cannon, for its first 15 minutes or so.

But with the introduction of a third character, a smart and sardonic slave (Shane Taylor), the play gets a bit funnier and much more interesting. It's not until act two, though, that it becomes obvious that the show really has something to say, and that playwright Richard Strand really does have the power to make us laugh a whole lot.

It almost seems as though "Butler" is two different plays, one very good and one not so much.

Butler, when we meet him, is a novice general, only weeks into his military tenure. He's a lawyer by profession. His lieutenant (played by Joe Ditmyer) is a West Point man who has little respect for his superior.

A slave named Shepard Mallory (Shane Taylor) comes to the fort, with two unseen friends, looking to escape to the north. He knows it's against the law for Butler to help him, but he figures that Butler, being a lawyer, knows how to twist the words of the law to his own advantage.

That's pretty much all that happens in the hour or so before intermission. Taylor's performance (and Mallory's character) are colorful enough to keep the audience's interest, and Hoffman's bluster is intermittently entertaining.

After intermission, a Confederate officer (Jim Sorensen) comes to the fort to collect the runaway slaves. But Butler takes an instant dislike to the other officer, and uses intelligence (in every sense of the word) from Mallory to keep the slaves in the safety of the fort. (That's a bit of a "spoiler," perhaps, but the upshot is basic and familiar Civil War history -- Butler really did house runaway slaves in Fort Monroe.)

The payoff is worth the wait. Strand's second act is clever, streamlined and full of laughs and surprises. Hoffman, Ditmyer and Taylor all deliver much stronger performances in the second act, and Sorensen (a long-time area stalwart making his FST debut) turns in one of his best performances in a long time. Cannon's direction becomes much cleaner and more natural, too.

In the end, you're left thinking about how much fun the play was, and marvelling at playwright Strand's inventiveness, the performances by Taylor and Hoffman, the set by Mariah and Isabel Curley-Clay and the costumes by Donna Riggs.

Details: Through Feb. 26 in the Keating Theatre at Florida Studio Theatre, 1241 N Palm Ave., Sarasota. Show times: various. Tickets: $25-$39 Information: 941-366-9000, floridastudiotheatre.org.

Marty Clear, features writer/columnist, can be reached at 941-708-7919. Follow twitter.com/martinclear.

This story was originally published December 23, 2015 at 6:03 PM with the headline "'Butler' serves up laughs at Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota ."