Satiar Pourvasei and Jill Renner (Photo by Phil Cass)
Reviewed by Iris Mann
Pacific Resident Theatre – 2nd Stage
Through July 7
Gregg Ostrin’s world premiere play rests on a delicious premise. A womanizing, hard-drinking, spy, who blithely murders enemies of the state, is arrested for drunk driving and taken to rehab to mend his dissolute ways. While this farcical look at outdated stereotypes of manliness à la James Bond can be delightfully smart and humorous, there are times when the comedy seems obvious and not particularly clever.
As the action begins, a thoroughly confused Simon Cross (Satiar Pourvasei) finds himself at a recovery center called New Horizons. Stella (Jill Renner), a therapist, examines him and diagnoses him with various psychological conditions. Simon insists that he’s a master spy and talks of the activities of his profession, but Stella decides that he’s delusional — that is, until he shows her some of his paraphernalia, including a bowtie phone, exploding cufflinks and strangulating suspenders. After that, she is thoroughly convinced.
When Simon phones his boss, Z (Cyndy Fujikawa, who also directs), he learns that the intelligence agency for which he works has sent him to New Horizons. The reason: while speeding and drunk, he mistakenly pursued a hapless Uber driver instead of the car full of assassins he was tasked with apprehending. The agency was also receiving complaints from its female employees about Simon’s sexually oriented behavior that was “inappropriate, misogynistic, destructive,” and was risking a lawsuit.
Simon next finds himself in group therapy with non-binary Pixie (Alondra Andrade), whose father used to bully her, Yvonne (Rachel Townsend), who will graduate to sober living in a few days, and Gary (Stuart W. Howard in one of two roles), who has restless leg syndrome, along with sex addiction issues, intimacy issues and food issues. Gary, who is gay, hasn’t been able to realize his lifelong dream of running a mobile dog grooming service. Through his interaction with the people at New Horizons, Simon comes to understand himself and his “toxic masculinity.”
But his reformation comes a bit too quickly and easily. It would help if his path to enlightenment were portrayed as more of a painful struggle. On the other hand, one of the particularly engaging and noteworthy aspects of the script is that it contains several surprises. For example, some of the characters turn out not to be what they seem at first.
Fujikawa helms the piece at a pace that suits the material, with only the occasional slowdown. She also makes good use of the small, sparsely decorated stage. As Z, she is a very strong presence and adds a good deal to the production. Pourvasei appears invested in his role, but it would help if he embodied more of the debonair quality one would expect from his character. In addition, he occasionally swallows some of his dialogue or speaks so quickly that the lines become unintelligible. Renner, Andrade and Townsend acquit themselves well, but it is Howard who gives the standout performance in two distinct roles, each carefully and skillfully delineated. His comedic portrayal of Gary is appropriately naïve, innocent and needy. And as Lazarus Rex, Simon’s nemesis, who is bored and misses Simon’s challenging presence as “an enemy of equal power and instinct,” Howard is hilariously outrageous. His performance is not to be missed.
Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd., Venice. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 3 pm; thru July 7. https://pacificresidenttheatre.org/18272-2/ Running time: 80 minutes with no intermission.
