Phrazzled

Reviewed by Gray Palmer
Theatre of NOTE
Through May 21

Even a misfire may have its instructive pleasures. In Phrazzled, receiving a world premiere at Theatre of NOTE, writer-director Phinneas Kiyomura tells the story of a struggling TV writer and his alienated co-workers in a TV writer’s room. Or, not exactly. Phrazzled takes place in the writer’s assistants’ area, really the hallway outside a showrunner’s assistant’s office. So we’re in hell.

At Phrazzled, some of our pleasure is related to puzzle-solving, to the distraction of crosswords, anagrams, palindromes, etc., or maybe to the enjoyment of a foreground/background illusion. Plus, there are some jokes, some of them funny.

We meet frustrated Phraz (Tony DeCarlo), slapping himself to invent a bit of narrative because the only way out of his miserable job is “to write his way out” and sell a script. (It’s unlikely that rude Phraz would be promoted, as he well knows, to the position of “writer,” which anyhow doesn’t exactly require writing.)  Phraz tries to write about himself and his resentments, or “about a guy like me, but not exactly…” That statement, repeated several times, is the tripwire of Kiyomura’s storytelling method.

Immediately after we’ve been introduced to workmate Barney (Keith Hanson), a Jack Blackish type, and to the insufferable boss, showrunner’s assistant Whisk (Gina Garcia-Sharp), we fall into a rabbit-hole of writerly fantasy. At a weird scene-change, the three principal characters are replaced by three others, in what might be a compensating fantasy.  Sit-com “actual” is rendered into sit-com “copy,” as, possibly, an animated writer’s draft. Phraz turns into the identically pronounced Frasz (Troy Blendell), Barney changes to Betty (Andrea Ruth), and Whisk to Spur (Sierra Marcks). The rest of the play alternates between these parallel sets. Both sets are alienated workers hatefully competing with others, both working on parallel TV shows (both execrable).

In the funhouse of this nauseating hell, you must puzzle out for yourself which set of characters is the actual and which the copy. There is a difference in tone between the story tracks. One track might be said to smile valiantly even when sickened, while the other kills. But, really, the misery of the various terrified characters is seen by all in the same way, as personal failure of a specific kind: poor salesmanship. Is this an enlivening kind of critical engagement with the problems of TV? When Phraz and Frasz speak of theater, they use identical phrases — their idealization has the creepy sound of lost illusions.

One person in the story, another writer of course, smarmy and probably talent-freeTravis (Will McFadden), does escape Phraz/Frasz’s delirious duplication of “life into script.” But he doesn’t escape the hell of a writer’s melt-down. There’s a long pedigree of that melt-down in Hollywood, comic and otherwise. It may be unfair to mention exemplars, so I won’t, but theatergoers should remember, and so should a smart playwright who attempts classic form.

All the actors are good in this familiar styling, all well-cast. For this, Kiyomura is to be congratulated. But did the scenic design (by Naomi Kasahara) have to be dingy? Did the shifting of lights (designed by Ed Madry) between the parallel stories have to be incoherent?

Theatre of NOTE, 1517 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m. ; Sun. 7 p.m. through May 21. (323) 856-8611, theatreofnote.com. Running time: 90 minutes with no intermission.