Weigh Station (review)

 

Spoilers ahoy!

The setting is a bar.  Bunch of different folks sitting around drinking, playing darts, some flirting, some betting.  

Except it is not really a bar.  For one thing, the bartender Charlie (Grace Bahler) is too young.  Way too young.  Then, a man enters the bar.  Nolan (Bryan Caldwell), a writer who immediately attracts the attention of all the Regulars.  He orders a drink, cannot find his wallet, then is told here drinks are paid for with stories.  Not lies.  Not fiction.  Stories about the one who ordered the drink.

Weird?  Yes.  But the truth emerges soon enough.  The title is a clue--Weigh Station.  Maybe  you thought that was the name of the bar?  It would be a good one, come to think on it. But...no.

Playwright Donnie Jarman (who is a friend of mine) created into this two act story a portrait of an Afterlife in the form of a bar.  Everyone here--well, everyone but Charlie--is dead.  Calculus Professor Sean (Jonaton Wyne) had a heart attack.  Frankie and Emma (Sofia Gregory, Nina Rancel) were a couple who died in an accident.  And so on.  

Nolan of course does not believe this, not even when he finds the door to leave just leads him directly back here.  Again and again and again.  They all laugh, having done the same many times.  A bunch of strangers with forever to drink and talk, mostly about themselves.  Julie (Lyn Alicia Henderson) seems nice, welcoming Nolan and flirting full throttle.  Chris (Anthony Lorenzo Garcia) obsesses over his girlfriend in life, whether she would have said 'yes' when and if he got up the courage to propose?  Joe (Miguel Berlingereri) sympathizes but refuses to offer any firm opinions, not least because his own marriage crashed then burned.  

Two things bind this entire show together, brought very much into sharp relief by director Marcus Nobreus.

First are these characters, their interplay and unrevealed secrets--all hinted at practically from page one.  

Second is the situation itself.  Because, what really is this place?  Most presume it to be purgatory, because no one here seems horrible nor saintly.  Plus--who or what is Charlie?  The evidence, they say, seems to make sense.  Nolan points out no it doesn't.  And he is right.

Both threads collide in an entwined knot of fear, drunkenness, desperation, and maybe just tiredness.  Even the secrets we don't want to reveal, cannot bear speak aloud even to ourselves--part of us wants to say them.

Here especially the skill of writer, director, and actors really emerges, and frankly blew my mind in a quiet supernova.  Because as each character began to tell their secret, just before the reveal I guessed some aspect of what it was.  Not because of formula or predictability--that would have become clear before intermission!  No.  Because for these characters, the surprise of each secret went hand in hand with the realization that Of Course, That Makes Perfect Sense even though one second earlier I would not have imagined the truth.

A surprise that makes perfect sense requires a lot of artistry.  Almost more than the fine performances, the compelling story, the mysteries and questions building up in a way that frighten the characters and ourselves along with--THAT is a major reason for recommending this show.  

Weigh Station has been extended, with a 8pm show on Saturday August 2 and 3pm on August 3 at The Blue Door, 9617 Venice Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232.  

The Angel Next Door (review)

 Spoilers ahoy!  

The moment I walked into the theatre to see The Angel Next Door by Paul Slade Smith, I had a clue about the play.  Mind you, it only confirmed what the poster hinted.  One room with that many doors indicated farce.  Doors to hide into, to slam, to try to keep shut, etc.

And I was wrong.  Not a farce, really, but a very charming romantic comedy set in the 1948 but with a much more modern sensibility (in some ways).  

Initially we meet playwrights Charlotte (Meeghan Holaway) and Arthur (Geoffrey Lower), a married couple escorting their young friend, novelist Oliver (Armand Akbari) to a trip/visit in an opulent seaside mansion in Newport, Rhode Island.  Oliver has written a novel the pair have already adapted into a play, a novel titled The Angel Next Door, inspired by his newfound loving relationship with Broadway star Margot Bell (Jessica Fishenfeld).  She also is a guest for this weekend soiree, in fact her bedroom is next door to this one.

Almost immediately the two playwrights begin expounding on how this might work as the opening of a play, about how exposition might establish who they are, where the audience might be, etc.  This, coupled with the whole notion of the play being titled after a novel (and play) within the play is all a bit "meta" which need not be bad at all, but to be honest I don't think the humor quite works.  

But as it happens, this is among the few things in the show that don't work.  Mostly it is a lovely, funny, energetic pair of acts full of entertaining characters, lively situations, an ultimately very compelling (and funny) plot which belongs it this, its own little world.  I left the theatre grinning, and laughed often during the show simply seeing how certain things were getting set up.  

To be sure, Act Two is better than Act One, but that really isn't a criticism of the latter.

What follows is a roller coaster of misunderstandings vast and tiny, revelations wonderful and horrific, over-reactions slight and earth-shaking.  Our leads see a series of disasters unfold and ultimately decide to use their playwriting skills to "re-write" events into a happy ending.   That they (or more accurately, she) succeed in ways they did not expect adds to the fun--and fun is what a play like this is all about.  Yet there is more than fun.  A genuine love story emerges, two if you count how the two leads work in sync and mutual appreciation.

More, one absolutely scene-stealing character named Olga (SKY Palkowitz) undergoes a transformation glorious to behold, a grim-faced maid weary of dealing with what she calls 'Theatre People' (i.e. lazy crazy individuals she resents).  Yet as she gets drawn into the plot, she sees the world anew and embraces it with a simple, powerful flamboyance I don't want to spoil by describing.

She isn't the only one who changes.  Oliver and Margot, the couple our leads are trying to save (for selfish as well as compassionate reasons), both grow and change in a surprisingly lovely manner.  A counterpoint to all this, with great comedic effect, is very handsome and talented and stupid leading man Victor (Nick Lunetta).

The charm of this show proves intense, not least as some very real emotional grounding proves intrinsic to the climax.  Laughs, grins, thrills, plus a few strong plucks upon the heart strings makes a very enjoyable show indeed.  

The Angel Next Door plays  June 29, 2025 on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. at the International City Theatre, Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center, 330 East Seaside Way, Long Beach, CA 90802

Lear Redux (review)

 

Spoilers ahoy! 

Years ago, I saw a production called Tempest Redux at this very theatre, from the same company and with several of the same cast members.  "Awesome" frankly remains the word by which I most recall that show.

So imagine my excitement at the thought of Lear Redux!  The thing I perhaps most expected, paradoxically, was to be surprised.  Boy was I ever startled, shocked, moved, and yes very definitely surprised on every level!  In the most powerful, moving way!

A few seconds after walking into the theatre, the set told me much.  A very large, comfortable bedroom, with lot of medicines and even an IV set up next to double bed.  Above a fireplace (!) was a full color portrait/poster with one word:  HAMLET.  So I knew this was the bedroom of an elderly Shakespearean actor, and I guessed he was suffering from some kind of dream and/or dementia, blending his memories and perceptions with (arguably) Shakespeare's greatest tragedy.

While I was mostly right, the rabbit hole writer director John Farmanesh-Bocca composed with this amazing cast went far deeper, far more transcendent than anything I suspected going in.  Yes, King Lear.  But also, yes also The Singing Detective, Alice Through the Looking Glass, and a solid sprinkling of the Bagadvagita.  At times it almost felt as if my brain exploded by the end of those ninety five minutes in front of that stage!

Jack Stehlin plays the elderly Actor as well as Lear.  To put it mildly there are parallels between the former and latter, not least having  three daughters with the same names--Goneril (Jade Sealey), Regan (Eve Danzeisen), and the late Cordelia (Emily Yetter).  That he now has a dog named Cordelia, played in puppet from by the same actor, hints at some of the drama yet to come.  The actor's ever loyal, enabling brother (Dennis Gersten) ends up doubling for Kent from the play, while his two nurses (Ahkei Togun, Andres Valez) do time as Edgar and Edmund respectively--although I'd argue the former also is The Fool. 

Now, to be sure this is not really Shakespeare's play.  Yet it comes close to being the best version of King Lear I've ever seen (a brutally difficult script to perform) anyway!  The re-imagining of it all through the guilt and hallucinations of this deteriorating great actor strikes a chord of increasingly profound insight, which is increasingly also distorted!  Eventually, amid the storm, things take a wild Left Turn, exploring the inner dreamscape of the Actor, but also beyond.  In an echo of Gloucester's blinding, a new blind character emerges speaking of what quantum physics can teach us about Time and about ourselves.  Here is a prophet of sorts, a guide into the mystical underpinnings of what we see as reality, as the world, as all things that are and yet are not.  My favorite line in the play emerges from this, as Lear says with growing astonishment "...I am the storm...I am my daughters..." which of course is true on several levels.

I was reminded a bit of Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, who proclaimed "Hark ye yet again—the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks."  Yet whereas Ahab feels rage at this, longing to strike back at whatever lies beyond, the Actor wearing the identity of Lear steps through it.  He sees, he understands, he weeps and laughs, he grows a hard-won wisdom bitter and sweet beyond human words.  He does not want to go back, and who can blame him?  

Yet the play ends with more than tragedy.  Horrible things happen.  Pain and loss and terror in full measure.  Beyond, however, beyond "this mortal coil" lies more of what the Actor glimpsed on his Shakespearean dream quest.  

The conclusion of the play, enacted by such a very fine ensemble portraying such multi-layered groups of characters, lifted us all outside ourselves for a few moments.  I felt the ground shift underneath my heart.  And when I looked again at the poster, reading the description of "A Quantum Fantasia" I totally got it.

Lear Redux plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 2pm (with Wednesday night shows including post show discussions at 8pm on June 11 and 25) until July 13, 2025 at the Odyssey Theatre, 2055 Sepulveda Blvd. Los Angeles CA 90025.

The Homecoming (review)

 

Spoilers ahoy!

Tiny confession.  Although having heard of it for years, up until now I had neither read nor seen The Homecoming by the late, great Harold Pinter.  Hence this was an intense treat, to see a play of this caliber for the first time, done by a theatre company on this level...I feel buzzed in the aftermath.

In many ways, the premise (in terms of plot or situation, anyway) is simple, in terms of the play's period, the 1960s, almost cliche.  Teddy (Taylor Lee Marr), a philosophy professor in some American university, returns home to his North London working class home after six years.  This home consists of nothing but four men--Max (Troy Dunn) a cantankerous retired butcher now walking with a cane, his other two sons Lenny (Adam Langsam) who gives off a strange air--one that we eventually realize is "Pimp"--and Joey (Carey Cannata), the youngest in so many ways with hopes of becoming a boxer, and finally Sam (David E. Frank) Max's younger brother who works as a chauffeur.  Teddy arrives without warning in the middle of the night, bringing with him a wife, Ruth (Angela Beyer), about whom no one is his family has any clue at all.

She seems to be the first woman in this house, since the death of Jessie, Max's wife and the boys' mother.  

A lot of things become instantly obvious.  First, this house simmers with tension, unresolved and possibly unresolvable.  Every word it seems is a weapon, or a shield.  Secrets are everywhere, their presence increasingly loud, their specific nature remaining elusive.  

Second, what is true of one home seems utterly true (albeit in a totally different flavor) of the "home" which is Teddy and Ruth's marriage.  We sense instantly here is something afoot, which grows more obvious by the breath.  For several moments in the play I wondered if Ruth had been hired to pretend to be Teddy's wife.  While I dismissed that idea pretty quickly, by now the idea seems more likely--on Ruth was in effect "hired" when she and Teddy did get married six years ago.  Here is not a happy marriage.

Whose homecoming is this?  Teddy's obviously.  But we learn Ruth used to live near here, so might it not be hers as well?  The men of this house begin becoming more obviously themselves, a cascade effect from the introduction of Ruth.  So, one could say they are also coming home, home to themselves.  Little truths spill out.  How Lenny hates being called Leonard, evidently because his mother called him that.  Hints of abuse by Max are sprinkled throughout.  People keep talking about an old friend of Max, and Sam ends up spewing a BIG secret about him.  Joey almost turns infantile by the end.  

Throughout, words rarely reveal anything.  They hint, and tease, deceive and accuse, but hardly anything of import is ever stated clearly.  Everything, every sentence and phrase and word, is an act of combat, or a negotiation.  Life as warfare.  Or, as high stakes poker.  

And this cast, under the direction of Frederique Michel, makes every glance or smile or silence work exactly the same way.  The experience proves eerie, fascinating, a little bit disgusting, often quite funny, and it crawls under one's skin.  I should mention I know about half the cast reasonably well, yet looking at them on stage during this performance I did not see the men and woman I know.  I saw Ruth and Max, Sam and Lenny, Joey and Teddy.

Bravo.

The Homecoming plays Fridays and Saturdays 8:00pm, Sundays at 4:00pm through June 15, 2025 at City Garage, Bergamot Station, T1 Space, 2525 Michigan Ave Santa Monica, CA 90404