Love, Madness, and Somewhere In Between (Fringe Review)

Spoilers ahoy!

This will prove a very mixed review, just saying that up front.

On the one hand, Love, Madness and Somewhere In Between deals with a subject of great power.  James J. Cox explores a life which for big chunks of it counts as a train wreck--one in which he proved a fundamental victim trying his best (often very badly) to deal with a series of childhood traumas.  He dives into a bottle of Jack Daniels for decades, struggling out of it at times only to fall back when confronted by yet another trauma (because life always hurts--otherwise how could it also feel good?).  This makes for a solo play about a truly pure form of heroism.  Because he emerges from the darkness, defeating the monsters of his memories and his own worst tendencies.  No small feat.  In many ways, a glorious achievement.

But technically the show is something of a mess.

Cox gets full kudos for what is most important in this performance.  He delivers truth, the hard kind, the brutal pain inflicted on a child from many directions.  He disassociates at first, telling the story of his best friend in school, this kid named Jimmy.  Jimmy whose father drank and in alcohol fueled rage turned a home into a chamber of horrors.  Not the worst kind of horrors, to be sure.  That came later.  But Jimmy--lonely and vulnerable--proved the perfect prey for a pedophile wearing a priest's collar.  Just as James, later an officer in the US Navy, remained vulnerable enough to be haunted all his days when a friend burned to death on another ship.  Life, as I said, hurts.  And if it hurts too much too soon, healing proves challenging in ways worthy of nightmare.

That this grown-up child eventually faces his demons and defeats them is the stuff of some great drama.  I left the theatre profoundly moved.

But--to be honest, it took me awhile to get there.  At first, I cringed at someone talking to the audience telling really bad jokes.  Random scenes that took strangely long times to set up (for no good reason I could see).  The truly odd lighting choices including someone coming up or near to the stage to aim a flashlight on Cox.   It got in the way.  I found myself wishing for more simplicity, for the simple fact of this man telling/enacting his story.  Maybe with a little more careful editing.  A little bit.

Honestly, the...well, odd...production got in the way of a powerful story.  But the story arrived, and I felt its arrival in my bones.

Love, Madness and Somewhere In Between plays Friday June 14 2019, 8:30 PM, Saturday June 15 2019, 8:30 PM, Friday June 21 2019, 8:30 PM, Saturday June 22 2019, 8:30 PM, and Sunday June 23 2019, 4:30 PM at the Hudson Theatre Guild, 6539 Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood CA.