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

A Very Die Hard Christmas (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

If you decide to go see Theatre Unleashed's latest production of A Very Die Hard Christmas (which for the record I think you should) then allow me to offer one vital piece of advice.

Go watch the original Die Hard movie first. I haven't seen the flick in years and for that reason ended up playing "catch up." This lovely, silly show which aims to simply bring a load of smiles and laughs takes the fact that movie was set at Christmas time then runs with it.  Yeah, it qualifies as a spoof of the flick, with all kinds of meta commentary (one character openly notes she doesn't make good decisions while another admits she probably shouldn't be working for the police department).  All well and good.  But the uber zaniness rises when they start to sew in bits from classic Christmas specials...

For example (HEY! I WARNED YOU ABOUT SPOILERS!!!!) when the Terrorists led by Hans Gruber arrive at the corporation's Christmas Party (held btw on Christmas Eve--who does that?) they line up to do a rendition of "Snow Miser" from The Year Without a Santa Claus. ("He's Hans Gruber/He's now in charge/He's supposed to be West German/But is English by and large...")

Other songs include "What's This" from A Nightmare Before Christmas and "Where Are You Christmas?" from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

And that really is the least of it. What with audience participation, a liberal use of confetti, taking the notion of firearms as somehow important to Christmas and (again) the whole meta thing (someone actually asks Hans Gruber "What's Hermione really like?") it is like a big funny roller coaster of laughs. Me, I loves me some angst. But also, I really enjoy this kind of over-the-top farce that just makes you giggle.

The leads are Wade Wilson as eternally gun-toting John McClane, David Foy Bauer as best-dressed terrorist Hans Gruber and Liesl Jackson as John's wife Holly who is having what one hopes is the worst hair day of her life. All three show talent and spark, but to be honest the supporting cast generally steal show--all of them playing multiple roles.  For example there is Margaret Glaccum as a pregnant office worker with very inappropriate feelsings for the tall blonde terrorists holding her at gunpoint. And Bradley Upton, Adam Meredith as well as Sean Fitzgerald pretty much making up the rest of the cast in a wild frenzy of costume and wig changes (one of them has to change character three times in a single scene, and looks increasingly frantic as he keeps switching back and forth).

A Very Die Hard Christmas plays Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm through December 19, 2015 at the Belfry Stage 11031 Camarillo St., North Hollywood, CA 91602. Tickets are $20 and reservations can be made by calling (818) 849-4039 or emailing reservations@theatreunleashed.org

*Please note this musical parody production features loud gunshot sound effects, the use of confetti and air cannons, fake blood, profanity, violence, and jazz hands. Welcome to to the party, pal.

Cake (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Comedy, so the story goes, is harder than dying. I tend to believe as much, especially when going to see comedies on stage. To successfully generate a laugh requires vast precision. Cake, the new production at Theatre Unleashed in North Hollywood, is just such a work. Honestly, I rarely laughed. But I did smile a great deal. More importantly, I ended up caring quite a bit about these characters (frankly more important).

Wendy Gough Soroka is the playwright, creator of this ensemble of characters in and around a college--a English professor and her husband, their playwright daughter, some students of the professor, a co-worker, a husband, a member of the audience of the playwright's latest work.

At first, I felt a bit overwhelmed by the variety of characters and scenes, but as their interconnections became clear the more this 'world' felt real and even familiar. Teh network of how all these characters fit together grows before us at a very nice pace, enough so that eventually when events happen "off stage" we know who did them. Likewise it was nice to see a logical kind of progression happen, at the same time without anything as complex as over half a dozen human lives wrapped up in a tiny bow.

More, I especially loved it when someone discusses genuine issues without it coming across as a lecture. Really. Kudos for that.

Criticisms? Well, shifting the scenery too often distracted (although at times this was handled with a style and theatricality that warmed what is left of my heart). I felt the play itself sort of stopped rather than ending, but the rhythm of the scene changes methinks had a lot to do with that.

My greatest praise goes to the cast in general, but especially to Sammi Lappin in the role of playwright/daughter Cynthia. She was standing in for the talented Kire Horton, a marvelous actress I've seen before at TU. Lappin was great, script in hand--although I frankly hope to see Cake once more and get to see Horton.  Elisabeth Fenning as a reluctant mother as well as once (and future) theatre teacher was outstanding as ever (her earlier run in Ligature Marks at the same venue make me expect as much). Courtney Bell, Tracey Collins, Brad Griffith, Bobby McGlynn, Lee Pollero, Jacob Smith and Theresa Stroll filled out a cast that--this is very high praise when coming from me--never once stopped being equal parts truthful and human.

Lisa K. Wyatt directed, and I had a lovely chat with her after the show. She confirmed the play had been written for the Hollywood Fringe--and a very nice example of what kinds of shows the Fringe puts out there.

I feel this review hasn't given as much detail as I'd like. Readers cannot have much idea of the plot, for example, and I haven't addressed the themes or issues of the play much if at all. Yet while I have my own opinions on these, I increasingly suspect those are best left to individual audience members. This play is very much like history rather than a sermon.  We see lives lived, mistakes made, realizations arrived at, arguments pursued, accidents horrible and lucky occur, turning points reached, lessons learned (or not), and quite a few questions left  unanswered. To us, anyway.

Methinks the characters will get around to answering for themselves however.

Cake plays Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm until November 21, 2015 at the The Belfry Stage, 11031 Camarillo St. at Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood, CA 91602

Ligature Marks (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

I kinda really feel the need to emphasize the above warning this time.  So be warned.

Ready?

"On to level two." Up until that line in Mac Rogers' Ligature Marks at Theatre Unleashed this last weekend, I was simply enjoying an intense, well-written work performed with great honest and skill by a pair of really good actors.  Which, honestly, would have been enough. More than enough.  Nine times out of ten, that ends up being more than most theatrical performances offer.

With that one line, I found myself in another whole emotional universe. What a surprise!  What an utterly breath-taking, wonderful, disturbing surprise.

Up until that moment, I had been following the odd, dysfunctional relationship between Terry (Sean Fitzgerald) and Jill (Liz Fenning).  He, as became clear, just left two years of incarceration at a minimum security prison.  She, clearly his former girlfriend--although he denies it--desperately wants to renew relations.  He seems to know this, expect it, allowed her to give him a ride only reluctantly, yet the two clearly have a major amount of dynamics between them.  Frustrating, sometimes funny, often uncomfortable, but real.  The details of this--from both playwright and performances--hit to the bone.  Interestingly, many details about their back story don't come out for a long time--and by the time they do, we've stopped asking.  We see and grow to understand their present.

Or think we do.  With the above line, we the audience fall through a trap door into a depth about these two which shocks.  By then, I for one thought we'd pretty much reached bottom.  To be totally honest, given Rogers' previous play Viral, I was feeling a tad disappointed.  His earlier play had so much more meat than what I'd seen so far.  But only a tad, because this was still good stuff, way above average.

Then we step through the looking glass.  And it feels totally right, utterly seamless.  Entire new facets of these people and their relationship open up to our startled eyes.  Terry and Jill seemed odd, eccentric before.  We (or at least I) liked them, sometimes in spite of themselves.  But even before that line they start peeling back some layers to a depth and individuality that shows just how much Terry and Jill "get" each other. 

More, none of this jarred.  One thing that impresses me about Rogers as a writer is he's not afraid to write what screenwriter Philippa Boyens called dialogue that is "performer dependent." Without two skilled, talented, charismatic and to some extent fearless performers this play doesn't work.  Fitzgerald and Fenning on the other hand remain totally alive, intensely "into" the undercurrents of Terry and Jill from the moment they walk onto stage.  The way one looks at the other--and how he avoids looking at her.  The hostility suddenly melting away.  How they fight, what they fight about, what they agree upon and find interesting--all adds up in a spellbinding story which blends devotion and resentment, dominance and submission, hope and despair.  More, I can tell you this production, directed by Jacob Smith, does what a lot of storytelling fails to do--earn its ending.

No small feat.

Ligature Marks plays at Theatre Unleased, at The Belfry 11031 Camarillo St., North Hollywood, CA 91602.  Tickets are $20, and reservations can be made at reservations@theatreunleashed.org.  Performances are Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm until March 7, 2015.