[NoHo Arts District, CA] – A NoHo Arts theatre review of Not/Now written by Darrin Yalacki, directed by Amanda Blake Davis, and produced with Anne Mesa and John Lant at the Brickhouse Theatre through March 5.
There’s something particularly American about dark comedies…particularly involving groups of old friends with colliding sensibilities. It feels genuine and it gives a lot of room for humor and radical character development…but without changing the world, if you know what I mean. It’s familiar, relatable, and when done well, thoroughly entertaining.
Darrin Yalacki’s Not/Now is done exceedingly well. An accomplished writer and improv performer, Mr Yalacki’s very clever play recounts a reunion of sorts of a group of old-school friends from a small town somewhere in America.
An interesting selection of misfits, they are meeting at Baker’s apartment, one of the five friends, to welcome home the ‘one that got out’ – Goldie, an actress. Thanks to an unfortunate and self-corrected text sent to everyone, what they expected was an engagement party. But, what they get is a heartbroken Goldie moving back home.
As the evening progresses, patience is tested, old resentments uncovered, secrets revealed, tempers lost, and we get to know more than any fly on the wall ever should. It’s The Bill Chill without the sex, set in a couple of hours in a small apartment.
The characters are excellent, the casting superb and everyone transforms what must have read as hilarious on the page into something much more than funny.
These people might irritate the hell out of each other, but they remain friends for a reason, not just because no one else likes them.
Yalacki has written a depth of genuine respect and tenderness into every character.
Even at the toughest of times when none of them seem to be getting what they want. They can be themselves with each other, or at least the selves they think they want to be. Sometimes old friends can be too much of a mirror. No one really wants to see who they really are all the time after all. What we all really need is a constant, a touchstone, a pillar. Something or someone that reminds you that you can mess up and be an idiot and fail miserably and still be loved.
Not/Now is a wonderful, nutty, unpredictable and highly entertaining play about friends who can’t help but love each other, in spite of trying not to. I absolutely loved this play.
It surprised me, tucked away in the Brickhouse Theatre, the audience rocking with laughter and gasping in all the right places.
Everyone was utterly brilliant. Really excellent in fact. They created a genuine sense of timelessness. The connection between them seemed real and profoundly deep.
For this to work it must seem like time had not passed, like the last ten years or so had never happened and they were all back in someone’s bedroom, gossiping about school, imagining where they would be and what they would do with their lives. Just being kids again, like time stood still. They make it work brilliantly…I believed every second of it!
I highly recommend Not/Now. NoHo theatre is well and truly back and there are so many plays to see! But this one is particularly good. Very, very funny, heartwarming and totally relatable… even the stripper.
It runs through March 5th…don’t dawdle!!!
CAST
Karen Baughn – Goldie
Mason Eaglin – Jack
Rachel Lemos – Tamela
Oscar Ramirez – Rafael
Lindsay Seim – Vanessa
James Singleton – Baker
PRODUCTION TEAM
Scenic Designer Laura Lineback
House Manager and Booth Operator Jonathan Harrison
Tickets:
https://www.simpletix.com/e/not-now-tickets-122901
When:
Running through March 5
Saturdays 8PM and Sundays at 3PM
Where:
10950 Peach Grove St., North Hollywood, CA 91601