If I Needed Someone (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

For those of you who don't know, a "two hander" in theatre parlance is a play with only two characters who pretty much share the stage for the entire performance.  If this sounds hard, it is.  Very hard.  Especially in a full ninety-minute play.  Even more when the play is one long scene.

If I Needed Someone by Neil LaBute is just such a play--demanding an enormous concentration without letup for almost two hours.  

Jules (Devin Davis-Lorton) is an animator who's invited Jim (Adam Langsam) back to her apartment during a part.  She is quite drunk and with this setup one might expect a work of horror a la Ira Levin.  Instead, we are witness to a wildly awkward dance between two people trying to connect--all the while each creates an obstacle course of their personal issues.  Which can be funny!  And sometimes, is!  More, it can be heart-breaking.  Again, it sometimes is.  Just as it is sometimes simply educative, sometimes touching, sometimes deeply uncomfortable (for so very many reasons) and sometimes very hope-ful.

These actors accomplish a Olympic level effort, not only in terms of bringing truth to their every word (no small feat) but in listening to each other (sometimes), allowing themselves to change (eventually).  In the process we learn to know them, learn a lot of their individual hopes and pains.  More, we even reach that special point when sooner or later we say quietly to ourselves "that is me."

Because the two person cast--while proving themselves capable of this acting marathon--have a very good script with which to breathe life into a fictional tale on stage.  It feels remarkable complete in its portrait of these two people, living as we do, in a time of change and not really sure precisely how to navigate their own time.  Again, like us.  Each ultimately wants very much to reach out, and each ultimately navigates those obstacle courses mentioned earlier.  From a slightly slow start, the script gives us a powerful series of moments and revelations between people who want to connect, want to understand each other, want someone to not give up (while of course not being a predator, a liar, a psycho or creep of some kind).  The conclusion, simple in some ways while intensely complex in others,  reminds us we can indeed connect.  Loneliness is not incurable.  We may be doomed to die, but we are not doomed to live totally alone.

Or we don't have to be.

Kudos to everyone involved, including of course director Frederique Michel! 

If I Needed Someone plays  Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays at 8pm, and Sundays 4pm until Sunday, September 22, 2024 at the City Garage, 2525 Michigan Ave. Building T1, Santa Monica, CA 90404  

Vampire Nightclub 1983 (Fringe 2023)

Spoilers ahoy 

Seems like every single Fringe has at least one vampire play.  I never get to see all of them alas!  But this year I did get to see Vampire Nightclub 1983, a solo piece using the undead as a powerful metaphor.

Audrey Valcourt wrote and performed this relatively short (under 30 minute) piece, explaining from the year 1983 how she came to be a vampire in New York City.  It makes for some interesting lore and brings the metaphor front and center.  She was not made, but born a vampire.  Although she felt so very out of sync with her life, she had no idea of the sheer scale of it, until a little after puberty when she began to change.  Or, become her true self.  Her best friend didn't believe her, until seeing the fangs she ran away.

Our narrator spirals after that, running away, certain she is destined to be alone forever.  After many unsuccessful attempts at suicide (including driving a stake into her own heart) she ends up doing nothing, just existing.

Until...she meets others of her kind.  She falls in love.  She makes friends.  Every night she dances and listens to music, mingling with vampires and humans, finding many among the latter perfectly willing to be donors for one reason or another.

She is happy, until one of her friends gets sick.  Which rocks her to the core.  Vampires don't get sick.  What is this?

AIDS.  That is what 'this' is, and the devastation, the terror, the melancholy clutching at love even as one's lover fades--yeah the metaphor (or if you prefer analogy) seems pretty clear, especially during Pride Month.

Honestly, this solo piece works well overall, and I ended up caring about the character and her friends.  I do wish she had greater skill at moving and talking like different characters.  In fact, I find myself wanting to see the piece expanded into a full length work, with a larger cast and frankly even larger scale.  

The last show (for now) of Vampire Nightclub 1983 will be at the Broadwater Studio, 1078 Lillian Way, Los Angeles, CA 90038 on Saturday June 24 2023, 6:00 PM.

Gruesome Playground Injuries (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

As readers of this blog may have gathered, many are the actual theatrical productions in which I've taken part.  Actor, director, playwright, stage manager, costume designer, sound/lights operator, usher, etc.  I mention this not to toot my own horn (well, not only that...) but as a segue to a problem with the script of the Gruesome Playground Injuries by Rajiv Joseph.  Technical, not artistic.

Let me make this excessively clear -- I mention this  as a means of praising the production.  You'll understand in a moment.

Essentially, the play deals with two people -- Kayleen (Sara Rae Foster) and Doug (Jeff Ward).  They meet as children (in a playground) and we see the course of their relationship over the next three decades.  Herein lies the first technical problem.  Given everyone has to make costume and makeup changes between each scene, the action most likely would simply stop between scenes.  Frankly such a problem plagues a lot of otherwise very good shows.

Credit: Ed Krieger

But -- the action didn't stop!  We never 'left' the emotional lives of Kayleen and Doug.  Partially this lies in the playwright's lovely choice of not strictly sticking to linear time.  Yeah, the first scene chronologically comes first and the very last scene does happen last, but other wise we jump around with them.  That helps make it feel more real, because it feels like memories.

Technically the production helped out by filling the moments in between.  Designers (Dustin Reno, Chris Moscatiello, J.R. Brude, Leigh Allen and A. Jeffery Sheonberg) gave us a simple set, easily shifted to lots of different locations.  More, projections on screens of images (with music) invoked a sense of time's passage, without actually becoming referential at all.  No small trick!  Initially I found myself thinking the pictures and footage shared should have had more to do with the plot, but that reaction soon evaporated totally.  I sank into the feel, the ebb and flow given.  Plus the actors never left stage!  They simply stepped upstage into the less-lit areas and changed clothes, maintaining an emotional connection, carrying we the viewers to the next scene!

Credit: Ed Krieger

And the result!  Gruesome Playground Injuries frankly is a subtle work, almost a dramatic poem about these two people who find each other.  Help each other.  Love each other, perhaps in a romantic way but always as deep devoted friends.  Never having to start up the action once more allowed the cast (and director John Hindman) to keep the delicacy of it.

Kayleen and Doug, as the title suggests, suffer injuries.  Most of Doug's are on his body, one way or another.  Most of Kayleen's end up on her soul.  Mostly.  For both of them.  At times it seems creepy, or tragic.  Other times the whole thing seems funny ("Struck by LIGHTNING?").  But from the very most basic start, when the two are just children at Catholic School, we sense the connection. We may not understand it.  They almost certainly do not.  But these two actors show it, breathe it, live it for those ninety minutes.  Childhood to middle age.  Optimism to despair and back again. Fearlessness and desperate endurance, rage and gratitude, denial as well as terrified truth-telling.  It hurt to watch.  And felt wonderful.  More, I at least could not look away.

Gruesome Playground Injuries plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 3pm until June 26, 2016 at the Hudson Backstage Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA  90038

The Devil's Bride (review)

Spoilers Ahoy!

Let me say right now I went into seeing The Devil's Bride at Theatre Unleashed utterly in love with the concept.  Essentially this is a sequel to William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.  At the end of that comedy, the villain of the piece--the bastard Don John--has been captured and the too-clever-for-his-own-good hero Benedick is given the power to decide his punishment.  This play is all about that punishment.  In effect it is sequel.

The result proved quite lovely!

Don John (Michael Cortez) we meet in a dungeon, under the auspices of Dogberry (Richard Abraham) and Verges (Cyanne McClairian), two of the funniest Shakespearean characters this side of Midsummer Night's Dream.  Soon enough Benedick (Jim Martyka) arrives to order his relief under specific conditions--the bastard prince is to forfeit all lands, treasure and titles unless he can persuade Benedick's sister Allegra (Sammi Lappin) to marry him.

Understandably, pretty much everyone in the play who hears about this does a double take.  What on Earth is Benedick up to?  He explains all to his new wife/once and future antagonist Beatrice (Jenn Scuderi Crafts), even as Allegra herself arrives in Messina from Padua. Generations ago, a gypsy curse decreed any girl child born of their family would see all those who agreed to marry them die before their wedding day.  Allegra, the first such child in generations, took the legend as exactly that--until she was betrothed three times in a row to men who died before the wedding.  She has resolved to enter a convent.  Benedick believes Don John might break her resolve and in the process she will temper his dark impulses.  And as a royal prince with a substantial fortune she "could do worse."

When alone on stage, Allegra reveals this is not at all to her liking. She had dreamt of love, of marriage and children.  But even though she liked none of her late fiancees, neither did she want any of them dead!  The same is true of Don John!

Naturally enough, Don John's rather dark turn of mind makes him presume that any woman so offered to him will either prove a "whore or a harpy."  Which makes good sense, as far as it goes. One of the best moments in the whole play, which you can almost see coming, happens when the two finally do meet.  And yes, sparks fly.  Allegra, wanting love so much and having renounced it for the most honorable motives, quickly finds her resolve challenged.  John, a man bitter with the hatred hurled at him for being born out of wedlock (some openly insist he cannot possess a soul for just that reason), finds Allegra a young woman captivating almost beyond words.  A meaty seed of a story!

But totally worthless unless the cast is equal to it.

Fortunately, all the leads in this play are well up to the challenge, up to an including Duke Leonato (Steve Peterson).  All throughout what might easily have been nothing more than an intellectual exercise for Shakespeare geeks (like myself) rises to an actual drama.  I will frankly say Lappin and Cortez steal the entire show, as it should be since they are the title characters and the pole around which everything turns. Lappin has turned in many a fine comedic performance before now, and I'm thrilled to see her (as I have longed for) do drama.  The genuine torment of her Allegra proved fascinating to watch, as was Cortez's turn as a would-be villain who in fact turns out to be rather un-villainous at second or third or fourth glance.  That he remains tormented by his late first wife Marisol (Molly Moran), so much so she appears to taunt him, could be cloying but remains instead a window into his man's soul.

Having said all this praise, I'll admit the secondary characters aren't really as well-served by Joan Silsby's the script as we might like, such as Conrade (Lee Pollero), Don Pedro (Matthew Martin), Margaret (Isabelle Gonlund) or Borachio (Carey Matthews). But then, we're comparing this to a play by Shakespeare after all!  That said, I found myself a bit sorry the heightened language gradually seemed to vanish altogether by the second half of Act Two.  Frankly, I will also say the sword fight needs lots more practice to achieve the kind of speed which makes a sword fight exciting!

Yet, those are quibbles. The Devil's Bride not only lived up overall to my hopes, but gave me lots of lovely surprises as well as compelling performances full of those contradictory impulses that make characters human.  I want to see this show again.

The Devil's Bride plays Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm until May 21, 2016 with special Monday shows May 2 and 9 also at 8pm, upstairs at the Belfry Stage 11031 Camarillo Street, North Hollywood CA 91602

Sex & Love in the Modern Age (review)

 Spoilers Ahoy!

This review has come late, and for that I do apologize.  Sex & Love in the Modern Age is the latest exploration at ZJU of a given theme, in word (including both song and poem) as well as movement, including dance.  It consists of a ten member troupe acting out a series of vignettes.

So what we experience is a kind of odyssey, an exploration of so many pitfalls and nuances of simple (and not nearly so so simple) human connection.  Yes, the meeting of the two rare individuals in a crowd not staring into their iPhones.  Yes, the fear of intimacy amid temptations of availability.  Humor from the potential perverts might find in the internet here.  A dash of lesbian bondage there.  An almost surreal but potentially just real example of parents giving the "talk" to their gay son on prom night.

And if this sounds like the theatrical equivalent of paint-by-the-numbers, then I've given the wrong impression. Instead we get a kind of variety show which achieves more than mere entertainment.  While exploring the pitfalls and even some dangers of human connection, the performers actually make one.  With the audience.  The show doesn't simply come up with one funny skit after another (for one thing, they aren't all funny--some even are a tiny bit heart-breaking).  It hits the chord of deja vu.  These are our hopes as well, and our fears.

Photo Credit:  Sebastian Munoz

In the end, we even make a connection not just with the content, but the cast themselves.  And other members of the audience.

For the record, plenty of Zombie Joe regulars can be seen, including Nicole A. Craig, Jennifer Novak Chun (she of the cello), David Wyn Harris, Ian Heath (not naked once for a change) and Roger K. Weiss.  Others in the cast are Lee Quarrie, John Santo, Jacquie Waldman and Julian Zambrano.  I mention Callie Williams last simply because I want to praise her pipes--strong singers have their own special magic, like extremely fine dancers, and she is one.

Sex & Love in the Modern Age plays at ZJU 4850 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood, CA 91601 (just south of the NoHo sign, north of Camarillo) Fridays and Saturdays at 8:30pm until March 26. Unless there is an extension.  I hope there is.

Love Sucks! (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Love Sucks, the latest entry from the True Focus Theater, proves to have a slightly misleading title. Appropriate, completely so, but given the tenor of our times maybe we expect a harsh condemnation of how relationships go wrong.

This proves to have nowhere near so narrow a focus.

Directed by Vanessa Cate and Angie Hoover, Love Sucks turns out to be a series of vignettes in different forms -- scenes, poetry, pantomime, dance, even a ten minute play by Cate I'd seen before (one of the perhaps three plays such length I've ever thought genuinely good).  The choreography in various pieces from Natalie Hyde and Cheryl Doyle showed a real power, and in the former's case (whose dancing I've seen for years now) an impressive pushing at boundaries.

Photo credit: Vanessa Cate

Sometimes what we saw was hilarious, for one reason or another. I'm still trying to figure out what special chemistry made Tucker Matthews singing a pop song (straight--he did nothing overtly funny) so very funny.

Another particularly hilarious bit had not a word of dialogue, but told the simple (okay not simple but incredibely perverse) story of a blind date that seems like one of those instant moments of clicking between two people.

Other moments were sweet, at times very sad.

Yet other moments, scenes and things shared with us other--sometimes very strange--aspects of this compulsion we seem to have, to find someone with whom to share the loneliness, to taste the days and nights together. Why do we do that, one might wonder? Is it really so instrinsic to human nature that we seek out someone, looking for that perfect companion, that other side of our wounded soul?

Photo credit: Vanessa Cate

This play doesn't seek to answer that question. It rather explores the beautiful foolishness, the silly and horrible mistakes, the hunger we keep trying to fulfill one way or another. We see a breakup so terrible and humiliating we want to crawl under our chairs--yet we laugh. How very human.

Remembrances of love gone away, for one reason or another. Unrequited love creating a seemingly hopeless triangle, which then becomes something...well, crazy. Maybe. But it might work. We'll never know.

It all seems very familiar, though. At least it did to me. Because even though my life has not had nearly as much romance as I'd've liked, this all rang true. Very nearly too much at time. The experience I find most powerful in any form of drama is recognition of myself. A promiscuous lesbian, a loser lying about having crabs, a young man kept as a slave, a married woman yearning for the girl she left behind, a gay man hopelessly in love with a straight one -- what Love Sucks made me feel was how each of these were me. Each of them were all of us, if only we'd admit it.

Love Sucks plays Sundays at 7:30pm at Zombie Joe's Underground Theater, 4850 Lankershim Blvd (just south of the NoHo sign)., North Hollywood, CA 91601 until August 30, 2015.  Tickets are $15 and in my opinion well worth it.