The actors in One Cat Away From Sixty-One are so perfect in their roles that the audience ends up feeling like they are voyeurs to a private conversation.

Directed by 2015 Box Fest Detroit winner Tricia Turek and written by Rikki Schwartz with Phil Hughes as stage manager, the one-act character-study offers glimpses into the life of Jackie (Kez Settle), a middle-aged woman who, at the behest of her sister Joanna (who says she is “irritable since her cat died,”), begins therapy.

Despite the title, no cats are part of the one-hour production. In fact, Jackie tearfully tells her therapist, Dr. Jacobs (JM Ethridge), that despite loving her late cat, Fred Astaire, with all her heart, she can’t get another cat because she could be 61 when the new cat dies if it lives as long as her previous cat.

Jackie also is having problems facing her own mortality, especially in light of the recent loss of her long-time boyfriend. Her therapist presses her on this, as well as other intimate issues.

Both characters are perfectly cast, with Settle conjuring up images of the just-this-side-of-dowdy middle-aged woman who fills her purse with the chocolates on her therapist’s coffee table while nervously waiting for the session to begin. Ethridge’s character is an amalgamation of several psychotherapist stereotypes. She plays the part with such ease that the audience is left perhaps wanting to hire her as their own therapist.

Slightly quirky with just a touch of humor, such as bowing and saying “Namaste,” (a Hindu greeting), she is a likable character, as is Jackie, who consistently minimizes the issues that brought her to therapy as she looks at herself in the most negative light possible.

Settle shines in the scene where she reenacts the events of the day one which  her character’s cat died. Ethridge perfectly sums up Jackie’s neurosis in such excruciating detail as to be almost painful. But the end game is a commitment to more therapy sessions for Jackie.

If only we could keep watching.

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