I'll Be With You Shortly (review)

 

Spoilers ahoy!

Carrie (Alexis C. Martino) walks into an office, disoriented as the last thing she remembers is a car accident.  She rapidly figures out the most salient detail--she is dead.  What she doesn't know--her precise location now.  It looks like a reception room.  And a smiling lady (Rebecca O'Brien) who points her to a chair and says "Have a seat.  I'll be with you shortly."

So begins I'll Be With You Shortly by Michael Merton,  with the charming and appropriate tagline "Welcome to the Afterlife.  Take a number."

At this point you might have some idea of what kind of play-length sketch one might expect with this setup.  Most will be pleasantly surprised.  Because while Carrie has some time to wait--even after being told there is no Time--we do not remain with her.  Nor do we find out much about the rest of the Afterlife.  We learn a little.  Not much.  Mostly we get glimpses of what is still going on in this, the living world.  We meet a variety of interesting characters, about half of whom will be entering the same waiting room sooner rather than later.  Disease, murder, accident, and old age--they run the gamut of why.  Curiously, teh mystery that builds is why Carrie remains while everyone else is pointed to the escalators up or down.  She feels this unfair, very much so.  Even when the smiling lady points out the alternative to being here might be very, very unpleasant indeed.  Instead she's made to wait.  And wait.  And wait some more.

Carol Becker's direction feels spot on, as the gentle absurdity of everything manages to combine humor with some real pathos, some darkness, a bit of tragedy, some hope as well as some despair.  Frankly this play--which for the record is exactly my kind of jam--feels tricky.  But that is something which came to me later.  While watching and listening, taking in the moments offered by the cast and crew before me, I felt drawn in to every set of characters and each situation.  That is not easy.  But she and her people threaded those needles very well.

From a crazy old cat lady attempting to "fire" her son from being her son, to the straight guy at a gay wedding learning an important life lesson, the beleaguered but startlingly optimistic cop, and the hiring of a hit man which goes south in a borderline spectacular manner, the ensemble of Janet Hoskins, Debra Kay Lee, Jerry Weil, Jason Paul Evans, Patrick Thofson, Amanda Lynne, Alex De Rita, Nick Benson, Brittany De Leon, Andrea Sojo, Andrew Neaves, and Jessica Dowdeswell pull it all together into ninety minutes of laughs and sighs, of shocks plus a few grim thoughts here and there.  

For the record, the night I saw this show  Joan Kubicek went on, and I did not realize she was an understudy.  So brava!

I'll Be With You Shortly from the NeoEnsemble plays Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 8 p.m. until November  7, 2024 at The Loft Ensemble Theatre, 11031 Camarillo St., North Hollywood, CA 91602.

Disclaimer:  I know and am friends with several persons involved in this production.  

Women w/o Walls (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Despite the disclaimer above, I generally try to avoid spoilers in my reviews. But for Women w/o Walls, that might be something of a lost cause. The central conceit at least becomes obvious (or so it seems) fairly quickly. But that doesn't matter so much with this play by Robin Rice.

A subway train, with a single passenger known only as Nurse (Kristin Carey-Hall) knitting away. She refers to herself in the plural--"we" and "us"--but this doesn't sink in at first.One more clue in fact as to where we actually are. Soon enough a young woman named Pamela (Esther Mira) becomes the only other passenger, and seems baffled about where she is going or how she got here. More, Nurse apparently knows quite a bit about her.  Inez (Jen Albert) a homeless woman with only one leg--literally on her last leg--enters and immediately recognizes Nurse. This, they agree, is her final trip, and it soon turns out she sees Pamela as her last chance at love.

In another age, the subway would be a boat crossing the Styx. We are in between life and death. Nurse (in a nice echo of the Fates) is "on staff" and perfectly willing to ease everyone's passage. Within limits. No malice here, but quite a bit of ruthless wisdom--very much needed as Tank (Natalia Ochoa) joins them, a street tough girl with at least one addiction, to music, and a hair trigger.

Of course stories about death are really about life. We all know that, right? We all know oblivion is dull, hardly the stuff of story telling. But love, regret, fear, self-awareness, memories, forgiveness, rage, imagination--these are the blood and bones of any (and all) good theatre. These things we get in spades.

Technically, this makes for quite a nice piece in many ways, not least because it will surprise you while making all the sense in the world. Higher praise rarely comes out of me than those words. In this case, there's more to come. Because like one of the very best episodes of The Twilight Zone or maybe The Outer Limits, this script builds on a myth to create a new one. I loved for example how the play eschewed the obvious trinity of virgin/mother/crone--or perhaps subverted it is a better way of describing what happens. One of our passengers for example is defined more than anything else by a troubled (but hardly vicious or even neglectful) relationship with her father. The diseased almost-hag makes her greatest impact not in terms of her age or supposed wisdom, but rather because she's in her heart of hearts still a maiden--still searching for the ephemeral connection of a soul mate. The tough grrl, she doesn't really fit any of these three archetypes. Yet she fits within this story like a glove. Likewise we conspicuously lack (to those devoted to symbolism following the usual grooves) anyone middle class--unless one counts the Nurse. One looks in vain for more than a few overt references of legends of ancient days and nights. Yet the play becomes a legend--infusing such lovely details as an imaginary tea set, or the color to be chosen amongst many balls of string with telling power.

All of which would excite only the mind were it not for the cast and direction (from Frances Loy).

Were these characters not real, I would not have cared. If Inez' basic humanity didn't touch me, how could I have found myself hoping she won Pamela's heart? Had Pamela not seemed to contain the depths to make that at least a possibility, that hope would have died pretty quickly. Tank likewise could have come across as nothing more than an annoyance--the type one often does encounter in mass transit, not coincidentally--but whatever hungers drove this girl came across as genuine, raw, and born at least in part from some pain that felt familar.

In the end, just before the play ended--and I mean less than ninety seconds before the lights faded--I saw how it would end. This is not a criticism, but praise. All the words and performances and the rest had opened my eyes to let me know what the ending would have to be, must be, naturally flowed from every detail. And my reaction? My hand went to my mouth, a tear welled in my eye, and in my mind the words "Yes, of course" echoed.  The revelation stood revealed, complete. And Was Good.

Robin Rice's Women w/o Walls runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays ata 4pm until Saturday December 12, 2015 at the Lounge Theatre 6201 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA  9003. Tickets are a mere $22 and worth every single cent. Or you can purchase reduced price tix at Goldstar.