Avery Norris, Lacey Buchanan, and Victoria Gluchoski
Reviewed by Molly McLean
The Broadwater
Through September 28
RECOMMENDED
Bachelorette at the Broadwater shows us what four frenemies do the night before one gets married. It’s 2008 and they have all the alienation that comes with being college-educated women with debt, choice feminism, and Cosmopolitan magazine.
Caitlin Arndt and Jenn O’Brien direct this comedy together. They keep the pace quick and the stakes high. They use the stage well. Every edge of it gains meaning, tragic and comic.
The acting is a pleasure to watch. Avery Norris, Lacey Buchanan, and Victoria Gluchoski have clear chemistry (they also produce the play). Buchanan, as Katie, speaks with a rare confidence and faith. She sends each snack of a line to the back of the theater for the audience to gobble it up (For example: “I WANT TO DATE SOMEONE WHO HAS A JOB.”) Gluchoski plays Regan with similar grace, justifying the weakened knees around her. They play each beat to its maximum, daring the audience not to laugh or gasp. The actors who are not also part of the producing team face an uphill battle (and sometimes succeed) meeting the chemistry of the rest of the cast.
The characters are bound together by their love of cruelty, which is just intelligence without a place to go. Their inane meanness excites us into a fever pitch. When it inevitably dips into drama, the actors take us there with grounded emotions, relaxed voices, and good senses of timing. The lights by Ray Jones help us as well, since they shift from utility to metaphor. A bright hotel room now has dark shadows and orange walls, allowing our suffused emotions to narrow and pinch. The costumes by Kat Phan all of a sudden change from glamorous armor to useless gaudy trash. The delightfully huge and tacky hotel room by Patrick Blanchard now feels just tacky. The sugar crash hits.
Leslye Headland wrote the play in her Seven Deadly Plays series, with Bachelorette meant to represent gluttony. This play is an oily delight with all the highs and lows of binging. It is a taboo pleasure to see women being seriously mean, as they usually only practice that cruel art behind closed doors.
The Broadwater, 1076 Lillian Way, Hollywood. Opens Fri., Sept. 19; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 4 pm; thru Sept. 28. www.thebroadwaterla.com Running time 90 min.
