Happy Birthday McKenna
Reviewed by Martίn Hernández
The Hudson Backstage Theatre
Through March 26
RECOMMENDED
Playwright-director Steven Silverman’s dark yet amiable comedy offers up a multi-ethnic family whose members, despite living or being raised in racially turbulent Chicago, have no apparent animus over each other’s skin colors. No, these folks are dealing with more explosive issues common to many a kith and kin, regardless of race, color, or creed – decades-old resentments, secrets that can tear them apart, and most important of all – who is bringing the cake to a three-year-old girl’s birthday party?
White, middle-class Carolyn (Heather L. Tyler), as always, is hosting another of her brood’s get-togethers while her police detective husband Ray (Michael Dempsey) endures, as always, her laments of that fact. Younger brother Tommy (Ben Holtzmuller) and his husband Parker (Colbert Alembert), whose ambiguous ethnicity fuels a running gag, have just arrived from San Diego, and are soon joined by sister Deb (Tracey Rooney) and the kids’ stolid Black stepdad Martin (Karl T. Wright) and his current — and ditzy — wife Lucille (Sara Ballantine). Bringing up the rear are the parents of the eponymous child of the play’s title, youngest brother Ed (Ryan Woods), offspring of Martin’s union with the siblings’ now deceased mother, and his partner Julie (Stakiah Lynn Washington).
Their banter is witty and mildly contentious, what with the sisters’ copious affection for their “dad” Martin upsetting Tommy, “entrepreneur” Ed’s dubious pitches for investment to his latest deal, and long-held and inane family traditions. But when Tommy puts a shocking request on the table, the party descends into a domestic fiasco which is amusingly mediated by Ray’s co-worker Irene (Mari Weiss), a droll 911 dispatcher couch surfing at Carolyn’s and Ray’s house.
Despite a predictable plot, there are some clever surprises, with Silverman also spreading enough jokes and angst around for his cast to dig into. Silverman also explores dysfunctional family dynamics and how memories of one relative may not match another’s, delivering some poignant as well as piquant moments.
The impressive ensemble has gelled to commendable levels of verisimilitude that bolster their characters’ relationships under Silverman’s keen direction and knack for tableaux. Ballantine’s Lucille, sporting a boot brace of dubious provenance, offers some humorous wisdom and Washington’s Julie belies her mousy demeanor at a key moment. Tyler’s Carolyn plays the reluctant matriarch who still embraces the power of that position when she feels it being threatened. The tension between Holtzmuller’s Tommy and Wright’s Martin could have been bolder in a number of ways but the actors acquit themselves well with what Silverman has wrought.
We get the family we deserve, it has been said, and for better or worse these folks, ahem, take the cake.
The Hudson Backstage Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 7 pm; through Mar. 26 (no perf. Mar. 12.) www.hbmtheplay.com. Some roles are double cast. Running time: 80 minutes with no intermission.
