[NoHo Arts District, CA] – A NoHo Arts theatre review of More Quiet, More Noise, co-written by Hunter Gardner and Aileen Kyoko and directed by Alexandria Collins at the Whitefire Theatre through November 21.
Another new play at The Whitefire Theatre! More Quiet, More Noise written by Hunter Gardener and Aileen Kyoko is a very modern take on relationship stress and feeling trapped by our own need to ‘make it work.’ It also explores the allure of ‘new.’ It’s easy to be drawn in by someone who has an ability to unintentionally morph into exactly who you think you need.
The story revolves around Clarke and Roger. Two impossibly attractive people locked into a decade-long relationship and hitting a wall with it. While on what seems to be kind of a break, Roger meets Jade. An intriguing, sexy powerful woman and they spend the night together. The next morning, Clarke arrives a couple of hours earlier than arranged for a ‘lets talk about our future’ meeting and for what Roger had hoped would be a reconciliation. But of course, given the night he had before, it is of course the opposite.
This play could have been very cliche, very quickly. But with the help of some interesting twists and turns and some excellent performances, it becomes something deeper. An examination of motive and intent. A strangely real and utterly possible situational dramedy that hovers in the melancholy of a couple who probably should have never made it passed a college crush, but whose longing for approval and understanding held them together. Frozen in place. In love and in career and, in Roger’s case, in time.
People get stuck, don’t they? Nice is comfortable. Fine is good and safe is often more than enough. More Quiet, More Noise is a very clever and absorbing play about hard choices and feeling alone together. The characters are extremely relatable and real. They are us, or our best friends, or our brother or sister. They reflect our experience, pushing it a little but not too much. Settling nicely in that space between a life and a desire, a dream and cold hard reality.
These fine actors play wonderfully together, very convincingly and with nuance and fear and sadness. It makes you wonder and think and possibly even remember and it reminds us that we deserve more than a melancholy life. Bravo!
More Quiet, More Noise runs through November 21, every Thursday at 8pm at the wonderful Whitefire.
Tickets:
https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/morequietmorenoise/more-quiet-more-noise#
When:
October 17-November 21
Thursdays at 8PM
Where:
The Whitefire Theatre
13500 Ventura Blvd, Sherman Oaks, CA 91423
The Team
Therés Amee as Clarke
Aileen Kyoko as Jade
Brooks Darnell as Roger
Justin Powell as Roger (10/24 and 10/31)
Producer, Pia Vicioso-Vila
Assistant Director, Lauren Du Pree
