Our Top Ten

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

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Amanda Karr as Sonia, Mark Piatelli (Photo by Miguel Eliot Photography)
Amanda Karr as Sonia, Mark Piatelli (Photo by Miguel Eliot Photography)

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Reviewed by G. Bruce Smith
Little Fish Theatre
Through September 3

RECOMMENDED

You don’t have to be familiar with Chekhov’s plays to enjoy the latest offering by Little Fish Theatre in San Pedro —Christopher Durang’s sometimes-zany, sometimes-absurdist, and often-funny Tony award-winning comedy, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Still, your enjoyment will likely be enhanced if you are at least somewhat familiar with the Russian playwright’s work.

Durang cherry picks (pun intended) lines or themes from such Chekhov masterpieces as The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya and The Seagull. His Vanya (Mark Piatelli) and Sonia (Amanda Karr) are siblings in their 50s who lead a life of ennui in contemporary Bucks County, Pa, after having cared for their ailing parents for 25 years. Vanya laments that it is “our cross to bear” that their parents, both professors, named their offspring after characters in Chekhov‘s plays.

Masha (Annie Vest), a successful and insecure middle-aged actor, comes to visit her siblings with hunky boy toy Spike (Nathaniel Weiss) in tow. She has financially supported her out-of-work siblings for years but now has designs to sell the house, much to the chagrin of Vanya and Sonia

Also in the mix are two other characters — housekeeper Cassandra (Susie McCarthy), a psychic who is constantly — and over-the-top dramatically — warning of dangers (often correctly), and Nina (Blair Elise), a young, idealistic wannabe actor enthralled by Masha but nonetheless seen by her as a threat to her romance with Spike.

The heart of the play is the conflict between the siblings, most particularly Sonia and Masha. Sonia has long resented being ignored by, and in the shadow of, her famous sister, while Masha would rather not be around her glum siblings.

There are plenty of funny lines in Vanya; and it’s also entertaining to observe where the action takes its characters (though a good 20 minutes could be cut from the script).

The actors are all excellent and have great fun breathing life into their characters. Piatelli captures the gentleness and peacemaking qualities of Vanya beautifully. We see him most passionate in a long and nostalgic monologue in which he laments the loss of “shared national TV shows” such as I Love Lucy and Ozzie and Harriet. But, as well done as the monologue is, it’s a bit puzzling because it feels as if it came out of nowhere.

Karr shines as Sonia, particularly when doing an impression of Maggie Smith. The play’s most touching moment is her part of a pivotal telephone call in which she captures a sweet vulnerability that we hadn’t seen before.

Although Masha is a stereotypically aging diva, Vest nevertheless portrays her with affection. And Weiss captures perfectly the equally clichéd pretty-but-dumb actor who almost got cast in Entourage 2.

Director Cylan Brown makes good use of a spacious set in his staging of the actors. As a set designer with an eye for detail, Minolae Jain creates a scenic composition that feels authentic as a typically middle-class home in Bucks County.

And that home is inhabited by a pair of siblings who lament they’ve never really lived but who, by the end, declare “There’s always hope.”

Little Fish Theatre, 777 S. Centre St., San Pedro. Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. Through Sept. 3. littlefishtheatre.org or call (310) 512-6030. Running time: 2 hours and 30 minutes with a 15-minute intermission.

 

 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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Jacqueline Misaye and Carene Rose Mekertichyan (Photo by Gretel Cortes Photography)
Jacqueline Misaye and Carene Rose Mekertichyan (Photo by Gretel Cortes Photography)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Reviewed by Taylor Kass
Independent Shakespeare Company
Through September 3

RECOMMENDED

Anything can happen in the woods. In Shakespeare’s iconic comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hermia (Justine Faith) and Lysander (Patrick Batiste Jr.) are head over heels in love, but her father orders her to marry Demitrius (Kelvin Morales) instead. Hermia and Lysander plan to elope and flee Athens, but Hermia’s best friend Helena (Noriani Estevez), who is hopelessly in love with Demitrius, alerts him of their plan. The four lovers, along with a troupe of amateur actors rehearsing a play, find themselves lost in the woods — and in the middle of a feud between fairy king Oberon (David Melville) and fairy queen Titania (Sabra Williams). Mischievous fairy magic ensues. In the second offering in their free summer Shakespeare festival, Independent Shakespeare Company offers a fun and accessible Midsummer anchored by solid comedic performances.

William Elsman’s charmingly brash Bottom, who leads the troupe of amateur actors preparing a play for the wedding of Duke Theseus (Melville in a dual role) and Hippolyta (Williams in a dual role), is even funnier when contrasted with his performance as straightlaced senator Brutus in ISC’s production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar earlier this summer. It’s a treat to see the ISC company of actors show off their comedic chops after pulling off a formidable political drama. Other standouts from the cast include Jacqueline Misaye as an adorably naughty Puck and Batiste as Lysander (who also lends his impressive vocal chops to a live band at intermission).

Director Melissa Chalsma brushes over the sexier and darker themes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in favor of highlighting the play’s lighthearted, joyous humor. But apart from a few fun musical interludes and a pair of bell-bottoms or two, the 1970s Studio 54 production design isn’t quite strong enough to connect to the play’s themes. The fairies’ otherworldly costumes don’t quite match the 1970s vibe either, although their alien-like aesthetic and odd mannerisms are delightfully weird. Aesthetics aside, ISC delivers when it counts — well-acted, creative Shakespeare for all Angelenos.

The Old Zoo at Griffith Park, main lawn, 4801 Griffith Park Dr., Los Feliz; Wed. – Sun. 7 p.m.; through July 30. www.iscla.org. Running time: 2 hours and 55 minutes with one 25-minute intermissi 

 

 

A View from The Bridge

A View from The Bridge

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Aurora Leonard and Ray Abruzzo
Aurora Leonard and Ray Abruzzo

A View from The Bridge

Reviewed by Martίn Hernández
Ruskin Theatre
Through October 8

RECOMMENDED

In the early 1950s, playwright Arthur Miller and his friend Elia Kazan pitched Miller’s dockworker-based screenplay The Hook, with Kazan as the proposed director, to Columbia Pictures’ boss Harry Cohn. When Cohn – and the FBI – wanted to change the corrupt union villains from Mafia thugs to Communist ones, Miller pulled out and the movie was scrapped. Later, during the anti-communist witch hunts conducted by the U.S. Congress, Kazan “named names” of suspected communists and fellow travelers, many of whom were blacklisted for years. Miller refused to do the same and was charged with contempt of Congress, but the charge was dismissed on appeal. Their friendship was shattered, and while they eventually reconciled, Miller and Kazan were never as close again.  

From this jumble of events arose Miller’s timeless 1956 tragedy exploring the bleak consequences of patriarchy, betrayal, and the U.S. government — themes vigorously explored in director Mike Reilly’s taut production. As usual, underlying Miller’s work is a forceful critique of capitalism, this time on a global scale, as undocumented immigrant characters flee their poor and exploited country for a better life in the U.S.A., only to learn that the scramble to survive here is more vicious than the one back home. Sound familiar?

Opening the play and serving as its narrator is local attorney Alfieri (Sal Viscuso), who introduces us to Eddie Carbone (a remarkable Ray Abruzzo), an Italian American longshoreman living in 1950s Red Hook, a working-class section of Brooklyn. Alfieri describes the docks where Eddie works as “the gullet of New York, swallowing the tonnage of the world.” It’s a dehumanizing arena that can flay Eddie’s body and soul, but he finds comfort in his devoted wife Beatrice (Kim Chase) and his loving niece Catherine (Aurora Leonard), the child of Beatrice’s late sister.

His meager home is his castle, his throne a worn-out chair, and his family the subjects of his benign monarchy. Eddie and Beatrice have raised Catherine since she was a kid, and Eddie still treats her like one, despite her being seventeen. Catherine innocently encourages his behavior and dotes on Eddie as a father figure. But underneath his paternal affection for Catherine are confusing passions that Beatrice hesitantly begins to interpret as the possible cause for Eddie’s emotional distancing from her.

With Italy’s post-World War II economy still in a shambles, Beatrice’s undocumented immigrant cousins, Marco (Jesse Janzen) and Rodolpho (Brandon Lill), are smuggled in by traffickers, and Eddie finds them work unloading cargo. He and his family welcome the brothers with open arms but also warn them to lay low so as not to attract immigration officials or their snitches. While the more serious Marco is married with a family back home, fun-loving Rodolpho is single, and soon he and Catherine are smitten with each other. Agitated over the budding romance and in denial over his unnatural emotions, Eddie desperately tries to keep Catherine under his irrational control.

Abruzzo’s Eddie and Chase’s Beatrice make for a poignant couple, facing emotions they have long concealed and getting tangled up as they try to convey them. Abruzzo is a quintessential Eddie, whose lament of “I want my respect,” has a special meaning coming from a working stiff who feels his goodwill is being abused. Chase emotes, with eyes and facial expressions, the wearied love of many a put-upon spouse. Leonard is a fragile Catherine, initially puzzled by Eddie’s strange actions towards her but eventually discovering the strength to confront them.

In his scenes with Abruzzo, Viscuso delivers his lines with an emotional vigor that is mostly lacking in his narration as the Greek Chorus. Despite their shaky accents, Lill and Janzen deliver commendable performances as Eddie’s unassuming enemies, especially Janzen in key moments with Eddie. And Lill’s amazing voice adds to the credibility of Catherine as she’s swayed by Rodolpho’s serenades. 

Designer Stephanie Kerley Schwartz’ set, with horizontal wooden planks for walls and a combination living and dining room upstage and streetlight and a stoop downstage, emphasize the claustrophobic nature of the Carbones’ apartment as well as their neighborhood.

Ruskin Theater Group, 3000 Airport Ave., Santa Monica. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 2 pm; thru Oct. 8. Running time:  two hours with an intermission. http://www.ruskingrouptheatre.com

 

Heroes of the Fourth Turning

Heroes of the Fourth Turning

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Evangeline Edwards, Samuel Garnett and Stephen Tyler Howell (Photo by John Perrin Flynn)
Evangeline Edwards, Samuel Garnett and Stephen Tyler Howell (Photo by John Perrin Flynn)

Heroes of the Fourth Turning

Reviewed by Katie Buenneke
Rogue Machine
Through October 2

RECOMMENDED

It’s probably fair to generalize that most theater audiences, particularly audiences in Los Angeles, skew towards the stereotype of “coastal liberals.” Given this, it seems unlikely that the theatergoing public would want to watch Heroes of the Fourth Turning, a play set in rural Wyoming, that sympathetically depicts right-wing millennials. And yet it is necessary viewing — a tour de force of writing, direction, and acting.

The play, by Will Arbery (who notes in the program that he was raised by Catholic conservative parents), is set in a college town in 2017, i.e. after Trump was inaugurated but before Roe v. Wade was repealed. Four alumni of the fictional Transfiguration College of Wyoming are in town for the inauguration of the school’s new president. Each of the four represents a Catholic and/or conservative archetype: Emily (Emily James), the sweet, good Christian girl; Justin (Stephen Tyler Howell), the laconic, open-carrying strong man; Teresa (Evangeline Edwards), the Tomi Lahren-esque firebrand; and Kevin (Samuel Garnett), who perpetually feels guilty.

Teresa is determined to grandstand and impress Emily’s mom, Gina (Roxanne Hart), who is the school’s new president. Emily, who has an unnamed health condition that causes her recurring, severe pain, is happy to be in the company of her friends, but also just wants to get through the night and go home. Justin, in whose backyard we’re sitting, is a man who does not act on desires. And Kevin is having a few crises: of faith, of sobriety, and of self-knowledge.

These characters are not one-dimensional, cartoonish villains; they are knowable, intellectual people, humans whose counterparts across the political aisle are likely in the audience, or perhaps are friends of those in the audience. Or maybe the characters exactly as written are people you might know if you grew up among Catholics and conservatives, as I did. As a writer, Arbery is remarkably skilled, not just at drawing distinct characters and voicing them realistically, but on a structural level as well.  The strengths of the play are underscored by the ensemble’s fine performances.

The play’s title refers to the Strauss-Howe generational theory, which Teresa explains to the other characters (and for the benefit of us in the audience) is the idea that a long human life is made up of four eras, or turnings: a high, like the Baby Boom in the 40s and 50s; an awakening, like the cultural revolutions of the 60s and 70s; an unraveling, like the path from Reaganomics in the 80s to the Great Recession in the 00s; and the fourth turning, a crisis, like the Great Depression in the 30s or the Obama administration (according to Republicans) or the Trump administration (according to Democrats).

As there are four eras, there are four archetypes, which align with generations. Those born during an unravelling — that is, the Millennials — are deemed “heroes.” Arbery doesn’t just explain this in a digestible way, he also echoes it in the characters, each of whom represents archetypes both of and distinct from the fourth turning.

But this is fundamentally a play about abortion. Gina tells the alumni towards the end that, “On the issue of life, Catholics are called to be single-issue voters” — implying that the ends justify the means, even if the means are Donald Trump, a man whom no one onstage wholeheartedly admires, even though they all unquestioningly voted for him. Earlier in the play, Teresa and Emily, who are both pro-choice activists, debate why someone might choose abortion, which Teresa is adamant is murdering a child. The debate over abortion seesaws over the unknowable answer to the question, “At what point does a clump of cells become a person?” Similarly, this play hinges on the question, “At what point does your enemy cease to be a person?” Teresa unshakably believes that an aborted fetus was murdered, but doesn’t view Jason, an ex-Marine and sharpshooter, as a murderer.  

The cast is phenomenal. As Teresa, Evangeline Edwards strikes a perfect balance between imperiousness and vulnerability. Emily James hits all the right notes as a young woman who is simultaneously saint-like and fed up with carrying every burden with a smile. Samuel Garnett skillfully plays a man teetering on the edge, moments away from falling to an unknown fate. Roxanne Hart is commanding as Dr. Presson, a stalwart from an earlier era of conservatism. And Stephen Tyler Howell plays Justin adeptly, but seems to be straining to pitch his voice lower, undercutting some of the authority his character should naturally command.

As strong as the text is, it might easily have fallen into caricature. Guillermo Cienfuegos directs the production with a steady hand, guiding the ensemble so they hit each beat perfectly, without seeming over-rehearsed. As the audience, we feel like we are there, in Justin’s backyard, watching all this happen contemporaneously. It’s a tricky needle to thread, but Cienfuegos pulls it off, as if effortlessly.

Early in the play, Teresa tells Kevin, “I can help you think the thoughts but I can’t make you feel the feelings.” This play does exactly that, showing the audience the thoughts of the voters who elected Trump, challenging each viewer to find where they do and don’t agree with what they’re hearing. You get inside the brain of each character onstage— yet it’s not a play designed to brainwash. You think the thoughts, but do you feel the feelings? Perhaps that is yet another deeply personal, unknowable question.   

Rogue Machine at the Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Ave, Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 2 pm, Mon., 8 pm, through October 2.    https://www.roguemachinetheatre.org/. Running time: two hours with no intermission.

 

Proof

Proof

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Shawnee Badger and Vincent Doud (Photo courtesy of Dig Deep Theatre)
Shawnee Badger and Vincent Doud (Photo courtesy of Dig Deep Theatre)

Proof

Reviewed by Steven Leigh Morris
Dig Deep Theatre/Olive Branch Theatricals at The Main
Through August 20

RECOMMENDED

David Auburn’s 2000 drama, Proof, (originally produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club) received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play in what must have been a very slow year. New plays that hurtle around the regional theaters come in trends, and among the favored topics of the early ‘naughts were plays about math and science, and mathematicians and scientists — in response, perhaps, to plays about family dysfunction, an earlier trend.

(The current trend would be works, play after play, glomming onto identity politics and social justice. It’s been said that this has contributed to the death spiral of regional theaters, but that’s probably an over-statement.)

Proof is a perfectly good play that provided a potent vehicle for Mary Louise-Parker in the U.S., and Gwyneth Paltrow in the UK. It is, however, something of a pretender — pretending to be about something it’s not: mathematics.

The pretense stems from a central character named Robert (Daniel T. McCann), who was/is a quasi-genius mathematician at the University of Chicago. He was, because he’s dead. He is because he shows up as a phantom and in a flashback. At issue is a mathematical proof he is purported to have written, late in life. This is odd because mathematical brilliance peaks when people are in their mid-20s, and this proof would have been created by Robert decades later. The other conundrum is the mental instability that accompanies such genius, particularly after the genius-factor evaporates with age, and all that’s left in its wake is a crazy person.

Enter Robert’s daughter, Catherine (Shawnee Badger), in her late 20s, living with her dad until his recent death. Catherine has a penchant for mathematics and, like her father, a tendency towards moody, anti-social eccentricity and emotional fragility. In many ways, this is a play about legacy — who is it that wrote the extraordinary mathematical equation found in one of Robert’s notebooks? After suggesting at first that it was Robert in late life, the play then teases out threads of evidence that it could, credibly, have been Catherine, as she tries to assert. Yet nobody, from Catherine’s sister Claire (Mabel Maultsby), visiting from New York to sell the family home out from under Catherine, to Robert’s former student Hal (Vincent Doud), also Catherine’s eventual lover, can believe that Catherine has the temperament or the intelligence to have come up with such a proof.

Is this because mathematics is a man’s game?

Set on a back porch near Chicago (set design by Phil and Nancy Lantis), Proof is a family drama centered on Catherine and her quest to be taken seriously in a world of disbelievers, who include an intimate partner. And therein lies its emotional power. Very simply: The lost child is egregiously underestimated. Does this make it a great play? Not even close. It’s a soap opera passing itself off as a work of mathematics, because of a few lines that reference how a mathematical proof is constructed. However, it’s a long, long way from Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, a play that connects philosophy to human relations.

Still, because of this ensemble and James Castle Stevens’s direction, I was leaning forward in my seat the whole time. This inaugural effort of Dig Deep Theatre is extremely encouraging. Badger forges a Catherine who’s brittle and endearing in a fortress of her own making. The walls of that fortress crumble a bit in her romance with Hal, a connection fortified by Doud’s goofy sensitivity. As Catherine’s imperious sister, Claire, Maultsby delivers a know-it-all who’s marbled with insecurity — sort of like a torpedo that’s slightly off-course, knows it, and can’t do much about it. And McCann’s patriarch Robert is both grounded and lost, almost in the same breath.

Here’s hoping this company will return with more.      

Dig Deep Theatre/Olive Branch Theatricals at The Main, 24266 Main St., Santa Clarita; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm; Sat-Sun., 2 pm; thru Aug. 20. https://shorturl.at/lotw8 Running time: Two hours and 10 minutes with an intermission.

 

 

 

Twelfth Night: A Darkly Enchanting Burlesque Affair

Twelfth Night: A Darkly Enchanting Burlesque Affair

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Photo by lotta photo.kp
Photo by lotta photo.kp

Twelfth Night: A Darkly Enchanting Burlesque Affair

Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Toil and Trouble Burlesque at The Three Clubs

Through August 26

RECOMMENDED

You may come out of Twelfth Night: A Darkly Enchanting Burlesque Affair feeling as if your head has been caught in a blender.

But it’s a good dizziness, the kind you get after exiting the highest velocity attraction at an amusement park. You may not know exactly what you have just seen, but you know you’ve had a wild ride.

Judging from its present production, an extremely loosey-goosey musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at The Three Clubs in Hollywood, Toil and Trouble Burlesque is one of the more unusual theatrical companies you are likely to see on the local theater scene — and that’s putting it mildly.

If this present production is no exception, Toil and Trouble’s stock in trade is assembling a cast of talented and daring actors who are willing to bare all — well, practically all — in the service of Shakespeare. (In its seven years of existence, the company has also produced a couple of original plays.)

The evening opens with seasoned performer Amaya Absynthe doing a sinuous burlesque turn as an appreciative audience hoots its approbation.

The remainder of the cast is less seasoned when it comes to stripping and strutting. However, the actors all have amazing voices, and under the co-direction of Angie Hobin and James Ferrero, augmented by Ferrero and Jim Niedzialkowski’s excellent sound, all have their opportunities to individually shine. All are fearless when it comes to the slapstick requirements of this burlesque, mugging and gesticulating without constraint. And whatever their shapes or sizes, all are also fearless when it comes to divesting themselves of Jessica Jones’ colorful, fetish-inspired costumes. In fact, this show could be labeled a must-see tutorial in body positivity — an unexpectedly inspiring byproduct of the generalized raunchiness.

This wildly over-the-top adaptation takes Shakespeare’s gender-bending comedy and bends it into pretzel permutations. Plenty of same-sex osculation — occasionally mirrored by Jayne Hobin’s crucial large-screen video designs — gives us an indication of where the action is headed. At play’s end, Duke Orsino’s (Walt Gray) palpable disappointment upon learning that his young courtier Cesario (Kim Dalton) is actually the female Viola in disguise, puts the perfect punctuation point on this untrammeled entertainment, which reinvents the Bard for a new audience yet keeps true to his bawdy comical traditions.

Toil and Trouble Burlesque at The Three Clubs, 1123 Vine St., Hollywood. Sat., 8 p.m.: thru Aug. 26. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/twelfth-night-tickets-648521604577 Running time: two hours and 30 minutes, with one 30 minute intermission.

Pipeline

Pipeline

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Nate Memba and Ari Sucar (Photo by Kim Fowler)
Nate Memba and Ari Sucar (Photo by Kim Fowler)

Pipeline

Reviewed by Martín Hernández
Art of Acting Studio
Through Aug. 19

RECOMMENDED

“The source of this fight is older than the bricks in this building,” intones one of playwright Dominique Morisseau’s characters in her knotty but compelling indictment of the “school to prison pipeline” that pits primarily Black male students against a racist and increasingly carceral education system. While the line refers to an actual school edifice, Morisseau’s play alludes more to the structure of the U.S.A., its White hegemonic oppression of Black people, and the anger that such evokes among some Black folks after centuries of such bigotry.

For teenager Omari (Nate Memba), his pent-up fury erupts in a violent classroom altercation at a majority White elite boarding school in which his divorced parents have enrolled him, ironically chosen as a safer space that could improve Omari’s scholastic opportunities. It is his “third strike” at the institution so he could now face felony charges. His mother Nya (an affecting Fadhia Carmelle Marcelin) is a teacher at the “inner city” high school Omari could have gone if she had not acquiesced to the demands of her ex-husband Xavier (a steely Jon Joseph Gentry). Nya is desperate to unlock the secret to Omari’s anger and, failing that, finds solace in red wine, cigarettes, and other diversions Morisseau craftily hints at. 

Further aggravating the situation is Omari’s fraught relationship with Xavier, a successful business executive who is distant from Omari but who holds economic sway over decisions over his life’s trajectory. While Xavier’s support check is never late, it is his time for which Omari longs. His resentment with Xavier is irritably but comically articulated when Omari acknowledges his father’s arrival during an  intense encounter that also telegraphs Xavier’s own struggle with his inner demons — a harrowing bit by Gentry.

Morisseau’s touchstone is poet Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool,” a 1959 contemplation on the precarity of the lives of young Black males, that Nya teaches in her classes and that Omari recites to her in dream sequences. The poem underscores Nya’s increasing horror and guilt over possibly losing her son to prison. In one of a many compelling scenes, Nya relates to Omari’s lovesick girlfriend Jazmine (Ari Sucar), how her son’s life — and by extension other Black lives —can be snatched away in an instant for the most arbitrary of reasons. Morrisseau’s allusion to Richard Wright’s Native Son plays a pivotal role as well.

Supporting Nya is Laurie (Jennifer Sorensen), a dedicated White teacher whose commitment to her students is coupled with some hilariously archaic thinking on punishment, and Dun (Omari Willliams), a school security officer who meets his Herculean task with sympathy for the students and school staff but who rarely gets the same in return. While Laurie and Dun enjoy a lively camaraderie, their class differences are brutally exposed after a tumultuous event.

Director Bryan Keith keeps an even keel on the proceedings, allowing each of his actors to establish a presence with their characters, especially Marcelin and Memba as a believably loving yet conflicted mother and son. Vanessa Fernandez’sprojection design, especially the opening sequence, and Ray Jones’s evocative lighting, establish a suitable tone. Morisseau’s ambiguous ending only highlights Nya’s dilemma in fighting for her son. What else is a mother to do when the system is stacked against them both?

The Howard Clurman Laboratory Theatre, Art of Acting Studio, 1017 N. Orange. Dr., Hollywood; Wed.-Sat., 8 pm; thru Aug. 19. https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/1166054 Running time: Ninety minutes with no intermission.

 
Tevye in New York

Tevye in New York

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Tom Dugan (photo by Marty Gray)
Tom Dugan (photo by Marty Gray)

Tevye In New York!

Reviewed by Martín Hernández
Dugan’s Backyard Playhouse
Through August 6

RECOMMENDED

Between 1895 and 1914, Sholem Aleichem, the pen name of author Solomon Rabinovich, wrote tales in Yiddish about Tevye, the devout Jewish dairyman, his family, and their travails in their small village in the Ukraine, then part of Imperial Russia. For those who only know Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof, actor/writer Tom Dugan’s adaptation of Aleichem’s stories, on which the Broadway musical is based, is a thoughtful examination of his hardships and those of his offspring. While Aleichem’s stories celebrate the strength of family, Dugan’s one person show mixes some of the original stories with the playwright’s own extrapolations which add another dimension – a rejoicing in the resilience of immigrants who escape exploitation in their home countries only to find another form of it in the U.S.A.

It is the Fourth of July 1914 and Tevye (Dugan) and his twin daughters Bielke and Taybele – who goes by the male name of Abel for reasons Tevye later explains – are living in Manhattan’s Lower East Side and await the arrival of family from the Old Country. While his children and their Italian immigrant friend Maria have gone to fetch the visitors, Tevye has time to kill and what better way for a man who loves to talk – especially to his horse – than to regale us with his sometimes harrowing but mostly humorous experiences.

The comical largesse of a stranger twenty years before is how Tevye explains his transformation from wood cutter to dairy farmer, a change that eased the financial burden of supporting his beloved spouse Golde and their six young daughters. But even a bolstered income cannot save the family from increasingly ferocious pogroms against Russia’s Jews, forcing Tevye and his family to leave for America. On the ship, Taybele protects herself from potentially violent male advances by taking on a masculine persona, a subterfuge she chooses to continue in America but that Tevye finds mildly confusing. In one horrendous revelation, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire of 1911, that killed 146 mostly Jewish and Italian immigrant garment workers due to the company’s negligence, effects Tevye’s family in a profound manner, both for good and bad.

Dugan makes for an affable Tevye under JP Hubbell’s straightforward direction, with Hubbell utilizing common objects, from wooden crates to tables, to aid in Tevye’s reliving his chronicles. Adding to the family feel is the play’s venue, Dugan’s own backyard, where he created a performance space during the Covid epidemic. So far it appears successful and considering the fragility of the current theatre scene this could be one way, even with airliners overhead and barking dogs next door, to keep it afloat, especially since there is a pool back there as well.  

Dugan’s Backyard Playhouse, Woodland Hills (address will be given after a reservation is made.) Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 pm; through Aug. 6. dbptickets@gmail.com

 

A Bella Incarceration

A Bella Incarceration

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Ann Noble (Photo by Noah Cross)
Ann Noble (Photo by Noah Cross)

A Bella Incarceration

Reviewed by Julia Lloyd George
Echo Theater Company
Thru August 22

RECOMMENDED

From its very first moments, Ann Noble’s one-woman show, A Bella Incarceration, offers no easy answers. There is the actor/playwright in blue scrubs, a pink clown nose, and a blonde wig. Confined to a child’s playpen representing a prison, she doesn’t seem to have much consciousness of what lies outside her cell: a mini climbing wall, a skateboard ramp, a black tent, and a large orange, circular door labeled “The Before.” Ann Loud’s idiosyncratic production design and Noble’s own high-pitched clown voice seem to represent childish regression or arrested development of some kind, but it’s difficult to say for sure.

The only apparent certainty is that Noble’s character, Bella, has been arrested and imprisoned for something. She dances around the reason, speaking instead of being in love and the benefits of height (she herself is short, a fact which pains her). The object of her love also remains mysterious, but she believes that selfless love is the reason she is in her current situation. “When I think of the bravest people,” she says, “I think they must be in love.”

She then transitions into talking about the brave women that she admires most: Nellie Bly, Emma Goldman, and Dorothy Day. Their books are her sole possessions in the cell and she likes to quote their words when she’s “not feeling free or in love.” It seems that she both wants to be like them and believes herself to be like them already, a rebel who sacrificed her freedom for a cause. Turning her pillow into a puppet with a clown nose and a wig, she then begins to have imaginary conversations with these women to glean their wisdom about her own predicament and purpose.

There is a marked innocence and wide-eyed openness in Noble’s performance, making the funniest moments ones where Bella attempts to square her off-kilter worldview with reality. Referring to a cherry-covered dress she once had that “lost its cherries,” her last question for each woman is if they know of a creature that can gobble cherries off chiffon.

This heightened “manic pixie dream girl” quirkiness eventually falls away, however, leaving a much more grounded, authentic version of Bella. The spotless martyr image she had of herself turns out to be more complicated and the “protest” that landed her in prison much more ambiguous than previously shared.

This unadorned Bella has no wig, no nose, no blue scrubs, and no high-pitched voice. She finally tells the truth about herself and apparently wins her own freedom in that way, dancing around to an instrumental version of “The Sound of Silence” as she sheds the role she’d been forcing upon herself. This is the best, most intriguing version of Bella, though the audience unfortunately sees very little of it. Nevertheless, the show succeeds in being a refreshingly offbeat, charming showcase for Noble’s undeniable talents.

Echo Theater Company at Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave, Los Angeles. Tuesdays, 8pm: thru Aug. 22nd. http://www.echotheatercompany.com/. Running time: 58 minutes with no intermission.

 
Group Therapy

Group Therapy

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Marnina Schon and Andy Hoff (Photo by Frank Ishman)
Marnina Schon and Andy Hoff (Photo by Frank Ishman)

Group Therapy

Sweet Talk Productions at Theatre 68 Arts Complex
Reviewed by Taylor Kass
Through August 20th

RECOMMENDED

It’s Waiting for Godot for mental health-conscious millennials – after a time-change mixup lands Jonathan (Andy Hoff) and Cassandra (Marnina Schon) in their therapist’s waiting room at the same time and a local emergency delays their therapist, the unlikely pair have nothing to do but therapize each other. But in the play’s second half, an unexpected new arrival in the waiting room shakes things up in a dangerous way. Sweet Talk Productions presents the world premiere of Peter Lefcourt’s new dramedy Group Therapy, an exploration of the explosive potential of human connection.

Jonathan and Cassandra represent two polar-opposite ends of the spectrum of people who pay $225 per session for therapy in Los Angeles. Jonathan is a fastidious podiatrist whose buttoned-up exterior hides a messy and complicated dynamic with his boyfriend. Cassandra is a bubbly free spirit with a handful of maxed-out credit cards and no direction in life. Andy Hoff and Marnina Schon skillfully imbue likeability into their rather unlikeable characters and create a uniquely watchable dynamic. When the state of emergency necessitates a lockdown of the building, Hoff and Schon’s comedic chemistry is pitch-perfect as they struggle to co-exist and find common ground. And that’s the reason why actual group therapy is so effective — interpersonal dynamics can often create the friction necessary for greater self-awareness in a way that individual therapy can’t.

Director Terri Hanauer injects as much dynamism as possible into the play’s first half, which threatens to be weighed down by Jonathan and Cassandra’s boredom and frustration. But when mysterious intruder Michelle (Ashley Platz) bursts into the office, the tension rises to a fever pitch that’s at once dangerous and hilarious. A play about therapy is at risk of devolving into therapy-speak (pop psychology terms and armchair analysis), but Group Therapy offers a necessary antidote in its subtly absurdist tone.

 Theatre 68 Arts Complex, 5112 Lankershim Boulevard, N. Hollywood. Opens Fri., July 21; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 2 pm; thru Aug. 20. https://OnStage411.com/therapy. Running time: 1 hour and 20 minutes with no intermission.

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