Fool for Love

Los Angeles LGBT Center
Reviewed by Vanessa Cate
Extended through July 22

RECOMMENDED

Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love explores such classic themes as loneliness, broken families, the unholy power of fatherhood and inescapable fate.  The current production at the LGBT Center features three ensemble members from the Center’s triumphant production of Hit the Wall, which last year won the Production of the Year award from both Stage Raw and the L.A. Drama Critics Circle. The show is beautifully co-directed by Will Bradley and Cecilia Fairchild, who do utter justice to the script.

May (Charlotte Gulezian) is living out of a motel room in the Mojave Desert and trying hard to start a new life.  She has a job, a date with a nice boy named Martin (the wonderful Roland Ruiz), and is finally adjusting to the idea of existing apart from her old flame Eddie (Burt Grinstead).

But when Eddie unexpectedly shows up with a bottle of liquor, a lasso, a shotgun, and the idea of moving into a trailer park in Wyoming, May has a hard time refusing. The two seemed destined to be forever, albeit miserably, connected. And however much power they muster to alter their destinies, it always seems to be squelched by the ever-looming specter of the Old Man (Bradley Fisher), an invisible figure who nonetheless seems to have some secret knowledge and authority over them both.

One could hardly imagine a finer production of Shepard’s work, and set designer Grinstead’s re-creation of a lonely motel room is superb. 

Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner Culture Arts Center, Second Stage, 1125 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood; https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/3751?tab=details Running time: approximately 1 hour with no intermission.