An Inspector Calls (review)

 Spoilers ahoy! 

An Inspector Calls should almost be dated.  Written in the wake of the second world war, it seems to address issues specific to its era.

Yet here we are.  Topical as ever. Maybe moreso, frankly.

J.B.Priestley's play might almost count as an inspiration for The Twilight Zone.   Exactly why I'll leave for you to find out.  But the set up involves an engagement party in the home a wealthy businessman named Birling (David Hunt Stafford) whose daughter Sheila (Katyana Rocker-Cook) plans to wed Gerald (Isaac W. Jay), while Mrs. Birling (Diana Angelina) beams in pleasure and the son of the family, Eric (Monty Renfrow).  Everyone--or almost everyone--feels extremely pleased with themselves, amid drinks and talk of jewelry and of course business affairs.  

Indeed Birling himself gives a speech to his son all about how, no matter what anyone says, responsibility counts for nothing compared to taking care of one's own.  With superb timing, mere seconds after such declarations, the title come true.  Edna the Housekeeper (Quinn de Vries) comes in with news an Inspector has arrived and wishes to speak with them.  When said Inspector (Mouchette van Helsdingen) enters with dreadful news--news which upsets everyone who hears it.  Some.  Not a lot.  Not at first.  A young woman named Eva Smith (Isabella DiBernadino on the night I saw it) has killed herself in a quite dreadful way, leaving behind a sort of diary.  The Inspector intends to find out what led to this tragedy, and what awaits the Birling family are a series of revelations from which they may never recover--although they will do their absolute most to refuse to allow that.  

Director Cate Caplin made some interesting tiny changes in this production--staged for only a handful of performances at the utterly grand Graystone Manor--not least making the Inspector a woman (given this is 1932, absolutely impossible but honestly I for one don't care much).  Most interestingly, though, is how the memory--maybe the ghost--of Eve Smith wanders on stage now and then.  It creates a sense someone is watching the characters, remembering their actions, judging them.  Very appropriate as events transpire.  It brings into sharper relief themes explored in speech, but only slightly in action.  Methinks this choice proved wise.  

More, it echoes what this play clearly intends to do.  The characters end up haunted, and hopefully so to members of the audience.  As far as performances go, much of the action in the play is carried by the Inspector, by Sheila, then eventually Gerald and Eric.  Perhaps intended as a hint of how the young must shoulder most of the burden of change?  Priestley's play harkens to such ideas quite vividly, one reason it remains consistently produced seven decades after opening.  

A blend of mystery and drama, with more than a few hints of the uncanny, performed and staged for emotional impact are what this play needs to work.  Beyond doubt in this production has achieved precisely that.

An Inspector Calls plays Wednesday through Saturday (Jan. 14 thru 17) at 7:30pm, and Sunday (Jan 18) at 2pm.  Tickets can only be purchased online at the link in the title.  Performances are at Graystone Mansion (905 Loma Vista Dr, Beverly Hills, CA 90210) which nicely has plenty of parking.  

Our Town (review)

 Spoilers ahoy!  

Thornton Wilder's classic play Our Town shouldn't work.  Or so common theatrical wisdom goes.  It has no real "plot" so to speak.  No murder mystery, no drawn out romance against great odds, nobody feels the looming threat of bankruptcy nor is any marriage in danger.  

It remains a classic, one well worth the watch, for everything else about its very real story.  Wilder wrote myths out of the mundane.  He wove a tapestry of life that we recognize.  Because we recognize it, we see ourselves there, on stage, walking around and doing homework, gossiping or putting up with gossip, looking around and trying to figure out what to do.  Falling in love with all the simple happiness and terror that entails.

We are literally introduced to the small, very ordinary town of Grover's Mill via the Stage Manager (Neil Thompson), a kind of folksy Greek Chorus, a friendly Rod Serling, a nice guy who's telling the story.  Most productions make a big deal about who plays this part, given it is the largest role and the one who communicates most directly with the audience.  Or seems to.

In this show, the attention is much more centered on the George (Casey Alcoser) and Emily (Faye Reynolds), whom we meet as children, when they are friends as well as next-door-neighbors.  Later we see they have fallen in love by the time they get ready to graduate high school.  Their wedding day, brief as it may seem, is a Big Deal, even if nothing particularly notable happens.  Just a nice ceremony between two young people who want to share their lives together, will soon be taking over a farm.  In fact they even have two children.

We care about them, very much.  If we do not, the play will not work.  To be sure plenty of other characters wander around stage--George's parents as well as Emily's (Cynthia Payo, Fox Carney, Larry Toffler, Kathi Chaplar) for example, the town's constable (Rob Schaumann) and a busybody named Mrs. Soames (Dianne Travis), plus Mr. Stimson (Tom Allen) who is the most tragic character I suppose.

Director Mareli Mitchel-Shields does a fine job of making the ensemble seem to be a bunch of pretty unremarkable people in the same unremarkable town--yet by their basis humanity worthy of remarks.  Here lies the key to the play, and also to this production--belief in these people and this place.  More than belief, we also feel kinship.  Especially George and Emily.  It seems in this world--and in many ways I mean the one wherein we ourselves dwell--the fact these two people found each other is the sweetest, most wonderful thing.  And most tragic.  For we are not immortal.  

This cut deep.

At the end of the play, we shift our focus away from the living to the dead, and we follow Emily as she goes into her grave and starts to learn what it is like to be dead.  She finds it frightening and sad, but not in the way she expected.  Nor do we--and keep in mind I've seen and read this play before.  Yet in the moment of it happening, it is all made fresh once more.  Which is as much as any production can hope to achieve--on Broadway, on the West End in London, at the Globe Theatre all those centuries ago, much less the great theatre festivals of Athens.  

Bravo to the Group Rep for this production, and the cast members including Jeff Dinnell, Christina Conte, Noah Dittmer, Steve Rozic, Lew Snow, Daisy Staedler, Cathy Diane Tomlin, and John C. Woodley.

Our Town completes its run Sunday December 21 as I write this (have cut it far too close, alas) at The Group Rep 10900 Burbank Blvd N. Hollywood, CA 91601.

Border Crisis (review)

Spoilers ahoy!  

Regular followers of this blog will know how much I admire City Garage as one of the best theatre companies in the greater Los Angeles are (technically the company's home lies in Santa Monica).  I have never felt disappointed even by the least impressive pieces performed here

That has not changed.

Border Crisis is, as stated on the poster, an absurdist comedy by Charles A. Duncombe based on The House on the Border by Polish writer Stawomir Mrozek.  As per usual it remains very topical, especially portraying an increasingly authoritarian situation which overwhelms a seemingly very ordinary family, literally turning their home into a multizone militarized area, with armed guards demanding paperwork for leaving or entering pretty much any room, or part of a room.

At its best, this polemic works very well.  The Father (Bo Roberts) and The Mother (Martha Duncan) oversee a rebellious Son (Justin Parrish) and mediaphile Daugher (Hilary Kang Oglesby) while a grumpy Grandfather (Andy Kallock) and kindly optimistic Grandmother (Geraldine Fuentes) comment about goings on.  Things seem normal enough.  The Father celebrates how the whole family is together, and how they'll all be fine as long as they don't get involved in anything.  At all.  Ever.

Everything changes--as of course it must--as the government Representatives arrive, first demanding the use of this house for unspecific but wildly important negotiations.  Once completed, the Leader (offstage) gives a rousing speech to a large crowd outside, rambling about the evil of outsiders, followed by the arrival of Guards who explain there are New Rules--but not much about what these rules might be.  The Grandmother is almost immediately dragged off, since she is an alien--the numbers on her arm from last time prove it.  No reprieve.  She ends up in a some sweltering camp, with no idea as to her location.  Soon food becomes increasingly scarce.  The Son and Daughter manage to escape.  He eventually ends up joining a government-sponsored militia whose job it is to beat up and harass whoever looks as if they don't belong.  She, the seemingly least likely one, actually does join the Resistance--a secret but utterly impotent group more concerned with their own factions than getting anything at all done.  The Father and Mother try to simply endure, while Grandfather is literally dragged off for treason, being solemnly told rights and due process are not for criminals.  In the end, as the married couple sit alone in what was once a nice home, they take comfort with each other--until the sound of warfare, tanks and soldiers, approach.  The Mother realizes they are about to die, while the Father exults that the Leader's Golden Age is about to arrive!  

All this good stuff.  I should mention here all the government officials, from the almost cartoon "Diplomats" to the scary Agents in suits and sunglasses to the incompetent Guards are portrayed by the same two actors--Angela Beyer and Gifford Irvine.  They steal every single moment they are on stage, not only because their characters represent genuine threats, but their own presences which gives them so much power.  Both actors have shared scenes  before many times at City Garage and it shows.

Herein lies my caveat.  The Family ultimately don't elicit much sympathy.  One feels bad for them, but one's heart does not break.  Quite simply, they as the protagonists are not as interesting as the antagonists.  While some might argue they aren't supposed to be extraordinary, my own view is the ordinary can be interesting, can and should feel very real, very individual, and should engage our emotions--especially as they begin to suffer.  This barely happens.  It does happen, and the ending in particular delivers a gut punch.  But it feels abstract.  The message comes through, vividly, but not as powerfully as it could.  

Which is a nuance, because the whole point of this play is the Message.  Which is indeed delivered, enough I actually flinched.  Nor was I the only one in the audience to my certain knowledge.

And that nuance is my only real criticism, so bravo/brava to everyone including Director Frederique Michel.

Border Crisis plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 4pm until December 13, 2025 at the Bergamot T1 Space, 2525 Michigan Ave. Santa Monica, CA 90404

Golden Age (review)

 Spoilers Ahoy!

Parody too often consists of just mockery.   The best parody, though, comes from a place of love, a la Galaxy Quest or What We Do In The Shadows.

Golden Age by Thomas J. Misuraca is a loving parody of super heroes.  Essentially the notion here focuses on some elderly superheroes, now in a retirement home, who find themselves under threat by an equally senior supervillain and must rouse themselves to act.

Clearly, this is a fun idea.  Very fun.  The potential here is pretty vast.

Much of that potential is achieved, but not all to be fair.  And comedy being a very delicate thing, any time the humor strikes the wrong chord or misses out on just the right timing, it falls flat.

Fortunately, a lot of the humor does land, and more importantly the essential story works.  The last three original members of the Power Heroes--who are not only still alive but fully aware rather than comatose--are Power Man (super strength and super senses), Lightning Lex (superspeed), and Mighty Girl (super strength and endurance).  The former uses a walker now, while the middle is in a wheelchair.  We also meet Kirby another residents at the retirement home who has donned a mask, taking the monicar "Mask Man" and wants to join them, clearly at least in part out of romantic interest in Mighty Girl--who reciprocates his attraction.  Much to the grumbling dissent of the others.

But then their old nemesis Mr. Malevolent (hypnosis and can fire electricity) checks in to the very same retirement home, with a very dastardly plot in his diabolical mind!  Adding to all this is Ruthie a very curmudgeonly resident, and Nurse Candy who falls under Mal's spell, becoming his eager Minion (she steals every scene she's in, going for syrupy sweet to delightedly cruel in a stunning about face).

Overall the cast does a good job--Jennifer Ashe, Elyse Ashton, Dennis Delsing, Barbera Ann Howard, Ignacio Navarro, David Brent Tucker, Richard Van Slyke, and Heather Vazquez.  Honestly, the script could use another draft or two, because while the jokes are fine the interplay of characters and backstory are more interesting, yet end up under-developed.  What is there is good, but leaves one wanting a lot more (one reason the second act is so short).  Director Aurora Culver probably approached this challenge as well as could be.  

So, an entertaining show in a genre we don't see in live theatre nearly as often as I myself would like!

Golden Age plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm until November 22, 2025 at Sawyer’s Playhouse, 11031 Camarillo St, North Hollywood, CA 91601