Amy Scribner, Paul Schulze, John Ales and Julie Dretzin. (Photo by Jim Cox)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Hudson Mainstage Theatre
Through October 29
RECOMMENDED
Sea of Terror began as a workshop some 20 years ago. Since then, its playwright, Sam Catlin, has gone on to a successful televison career as writer and producer for, among other shows, Breaking Bad and Preacher, receiving multiple awards and nominations along the way.
Perhaps the long interim from the seminal exploration to full fruition explains the pitch of perfection that Catlin, who also directs, achieves in the play’s first full production at the Hudson Mainstage Theatre in Hollywood.
The “bar play” (The Iceman Cometh, The Time of Your Life) was a standard of the American theater for decades (perhaps because the playwrights, O’Neill, Saroyan, et al, were such heavy drinkers). However, in an era of health consciousness and fashionable moderation, a new theatrical genre has arisen — “the living room play,” typified by Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage, in which individuals get together for an ordinary evening, only to have their
interactions escalate from the innocuous to the incendiary.
The setting for this particular living room play couldn’t be more simple — a modest home in a quiet suburban neighborhood, the dwelling of childless couple Ben (John Ales) and Alice (Julie Dretzin), who are shortly expecting the arrival of another couple, Danny (Paul Schulze) and Doris (Amy Scribner).
Alice, in the grip of OCD, continually rearranges the hors d’oeuvres in an attempt to make everything perfect, but from her overwrought exchanges with Ben, we can tell that that this evening will be anything but. Meanwhile, we learn that Ben has such advanced social anxiety he can’t navigate the local big box store or tell a group of rowdy kids to stop playing whiffle ball on his property.
Profuse apologies between bouts of bickering hint that, despite their differences, these two have maintained real affection for one another. Besides, they are both very much on edge tonight. The thought of entertaining Danny and Doris, supposedly their “best friends,” fills them with such dread that they are on the verge of full-fledged panic attacks. When the expected couple finally arrives, we understand the reason for Ben and Alice’s terror.
Smug and indefinably creepy, these unwelcome guests prey upon their hosts’ perceived inadequacies and fears with craftily covert viciousness. And the fact that the sexually driven and fetishistic Danny is just waiting to pounce on Alice as soon as Ben’s back is turned doesn’t help the situation. Meanwhile, the bulimic Doris keeps excusing herself to go to the bathroom — not to vomit, but to slurp water from the toilet bowl, just one of the touches that contribute to this get-together’s disorienting streak of surrealism.
A master of quirkiness, Catlin invests circular and strained conversations among his characters — people who have absolutely nothing in common — with such weirdness and whimsy that we are continually caught off guard. He elevates the ordinary to the unexpected, mostly to our amusement but often to our acute discomfort.
As for Catlin’s staging, it is impeccable, thanks largely to his superlative cast, three of whom, with the exception of Ales, are holdovers from that long-ago workshop. The actors’ abiding commitment to Catlin’s ever-so-askew microcosm is evident throughout. All are virtuosic performers at the peak of their craft, but if one actor could be said to stand out, it would be Ales, whose Ben is the quintessence of haplessness — a downtrodden worm about to turn.
Hudson Mainstage Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Thur.-Sat., 8 p.m., Sun., 3 p.m. (no performances Oct. 12-15) thru Oct. 29. (323) 856-4249. https://Onstage411.com/SeaOfTerror 90 minutes with no intermission.
