London Levine Production Company Presents ”Possession: An American Serial Killer” at Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre in NoHo.

Written by Michael Levine

Directed by Denise Devin

Running from October 14 through November 5, Sundays & Mondays at 8pm

Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre, 4850 Lankershim Blvd, North Hollywood, 91601

This play is a fictional re-imagining of a pivotal moment in the early years of Ted Bundy’s life. Specifically, the time just before he committed his first of many grisly murders.

Ted was working at a suicide prevention call line of all places, and it is there that we make his sorry acquaintance while he is busy trying to “talk down” a young girl preparing to kill herself. He befriends the girl and they begin a relationship, the girl desperate for any kind of attention and Ted aching for something more.

We also see the world through the young girl’s eyes. Living with her two terrible and abusive parents, ignored, bullied, belittled. It’s no wonder she felt the way she did and it’s easy to understand why she might find a friend in the strange and weirdly mesmerizing Ted Bundy.

So we see their odd relationship play out. The fumbling, the flirting and the undoing of them both. This is absolutely not a play for the feint of heart. It is billed as a horror play and it really, really is. But not just for the blood and the gore. It’s horrifying because this young girl could be anyone we know. Her parents and their despicable behavior are all too commonplace and Ted is…well, he is charming and good looking and therefore his affectations are somehow easy to forgive until that is they begin to morph into his vile alter ego and he kills.

It’s a strange subject, although always relevant and very important to never forget. This time of year is strewn with plays that promise to frighten or scare but this play is very different and much more than a cheap thrill to speed your heart and dry your throat. It is visceral and disturbing and real.

The performances feel true, the actors channeling rather than acting and the effect of it all is honestly terrifying. Which is exactly the producer’s plan of course.

“Possession: An American Serial Killer” is only performing at Zombie Joe’s for a few weeks and if you are drawn to this genre then you won’t be at all disappointed. In the darkness of Zombie Joe’s, cut off from the outside world, you will be drawn into Ted Bundy’s warped mind, perhaps a little more than you may like to be. You will see through his eyes, feel a little of his cold heart and wonder why people like him exist and how they are made and perhaps even how best to avoid them.

If you have a penchant for horror and a need to understand those that make it in this world then this is right up your alley…

Cast:

Chris Levine, Anza Seller, Berna Roberts and David O’Hara

Production Crew:

Assistant to The Director – Ellen Bienenfeld

Theatre Technician – Alex Schetter

Garry Marshall Theatre presents “REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES” written by Josefina Lopez and directed by Mary Jo Duprey

The fear of the undocumented in America is primary in this coming of age comedy and season opener at Garry Marshall Theatre of “REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES.”

Ana (Julianna Stephanie Ojeda) and Estella (Sherry Mandujano)

Set in present day, this all Latina woman production features Sherry Mandujano as Estela, owner of her own sewing factory in downtown LA, who is in constant fear of being discovered as undocumented and deported by ICE. She works to exhaustion in 99 degree sweat shop conditions with her mother, Carmen (Blanca Araceli), Claudia Duran as Rosali, Jackie Garcia as Pancha, and Julianna Stephanie Ojeda as Ana, Estella’s younger sister, who is saving money for college and dreams of becoming a writer. Carmen, Ana, Rosali and Pancha are all legally in the US, and working with Estela who is deep in debt and just trying to keep her doors open.

 Estella (Sherry Mandujano), Carmen (Blanca Araceli), Ana (Julianna Stephanie Ojeda), Pancha (Jackie Garcia), and Rosali (Claudia Duran)

These women are first generation in the US, living in East L.A., with their cultural heritage in every aspect of their lives. Women of every ethnicity, of every age, strive for respect and self-acceptance, and we relate to this story. After long hours working in sweltering conditions, Ana can’t take the heat any longer and strips down to her underwear, with all the other women following her in a fantastic scene of women realizing their beauty whatever shape or size. This is a play of women realizing their power, and the confidence they feel in a society that judges everything we do, and everything we are.

Rosali (Claudia Duran), Carmen (Blanca Araceli), Estella (Sherry Mandujano), and Pancha (Jackie Garcia) 

All the actors are real and wonderful in their roles, and we get a vivid sense of how emotional and powerless they feel at times. Through friendship, and by supporting each other, these women succeed and gain self-acceptance.

“REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES” was a Sundance award-winning film in the late 80s. This production features script updates so very relevant to 2018 that tackle issues that women face daily, and of course immigration. Josefina Lopez has written a script that goes to the heart of her own life experience. Wonderful direction by Mary Jo Duprey, with a beautiful set design.

Garry Marshall Theatre has a winner in this first play of their second season. Come and enjoy. It is fun, poignant, heartwarming, and a MUST see.

Enjoy!!!!!!!!

Cast: Blanca Araceli, Claudia Duran, Jackie Garcia, Sherry Mandujano, Juliana Stephanie Ojeda

Understudies: Marlene Luna, Ariella Fiore

Directed by: Mary Jo Duprey

Scenic Design: Tanya Orellana

Lighting Design: Karyn D. Lawrence

Sound Design: Corinne Carrillo

Costume Design: Jessica Champagne-Hansen

Properties Design: Sydney F Russell

Dramaturgy: Katherine Nigh

Production Stage Manager: Giselle N. Vega

Casting Director: Jami Rudofsky

Garry Marshall Theatre

4252 W Riverside Dr

Burbank, CA 91505

Box Office: (818) 955-8101

Website: GarryMarshallTheatre.org 

Facebook: facebook.com/GarryMarshallTheatre 

Twitter: @GMTheatre.org

Instagram: @garrymarshalltheatre

Tickets: $52 – $65

Previews: October 10 and 11, 2018

Opening: October 12, 2018

Runs through: November 18, 2018

Thursday – Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 3pm

Select Performances on: Wednesday, October 17th at 8pm; Saturday, October 27th at 2pm;

Sunday, November 4th at 7:30pm; and Wednesday, November 7th at 8pm

Lonnie Hughes presents “Talking Trees” at the Secret Rose Theatre

“Talking Trees” is a play about love and the avoidance of truth at all costs.

Two people are in love, a desperate and all-consuming love, the kind that nothing else will ever compare to. But this love is so rare and so precious that neither of them know how to keep it. Their fear of destroying what they have together keeps them doubting and afraid. How many of us have felt the same and one point in our lives? Added to this intensity is the fact that one of them is white, Angolina, born into a life of comfort and privilege and the other black, Edmund, from a far more humble background. Their lives are good, both are successful and fulfilled but the pressures of Angolina’s mother’s sly disapproval of the match and Edmund’s constant feelings of inadequacy have them living in an atmosphere of doom.

Even now in our enlightened age, there are many among us, particularly in this country, who still frown on a mixed marriage…ridiculously. Although Angolina has nothing but love for Edmund, she worries that his lack of strength can’t allow them to progress, to have children. Edmund lives in a state of constant self doubt and together they tread a sadly treacherous path. They try counseling, some kind of new age “toga” therapy, and their therapist sees how unsteady they are and offers some hope. But it’s heading in a pretty dire direction. And as they keep more and more from each other, that is where we meet them.

The story is familiar, but the telling of it stunningly strange and dreamlike. It’s very, very funny too, which is interesting. How happy we are to laugh at pain so familiar to us, to see ourselves and our own psychosis in a play with actors living out our deepest fears. These actors finesse the story skillfully, with a brilliance that amply supports the writing. The story twists and turns back and forth through time and pulls on our heartstrings mercilessly. But it’s not in the least bit sentimental or syrupy, it’s far cleverer than that. The themes of love and loss and how we get in our own way all the time run strongly through it and there is some semblance of a resolution, although not so neatly as to betray the characters at all.

I really enjoyed it. The writing is excellent and it’s challenging and bold. The actors are clearly given enough room to become real, engaging and full of life, the director trusts them and that is very apparent, bravo for that!

I highly recommend “Talking Trees.” The playwright has drawn vividly from his own life and that is the truth behind the story we see on stage. Art is, at its best, an imitation of all our lives and “Talking Trees” is a perfect example of when that works. Bravo!

It’s running until November 11th, so get a move on!

http://www.talkingtreesplay.com

Written by Lonnie Hughes

Directed by Marjorie Lewit

Running October 12 through November 11, Friday & Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 3pm The Secret Rose Theatre, 11246 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood, 91601

Cast:

Edmund – Jahmone Duhaney

Angolina – Amy Braddock

Therapist – Vince Donvito

Thomas – Ray Tezanos

Woman – Lindsay Seim

Mrs Caudfeld – Barbera Ann Howard

Production Team:

Cameron Stark – Assistant Director

Joe Trupiano – Lighting Designer

Jasmine Fontes – Costumes

Kiko Yasuda – Choreographer

Jim Martyka – PR

Iffy Yang – Scenic Designer

Set Construction – Dave McManus, Joe Trupiano, Cameron Stark, Tommy Germanovich

Executive Producers – Wendy Siegel, Steven Siegel, Mindy Schneider, Michael Esser

Buddy Ebsen is a Hollywood legend…an icon.

He was a larger than life presence in our living rooms as we all grew up watching him on “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Davy Crocket,” and as a pioneer of early Hollywood musicals. But he was also a father. His life, his career and his family are the focus of his daughter Kiki’s and her brother Dustin’s gentle, honest and loving portrait of the man they knew as Dad.

What’s so effective about this piece to me is the wonderful way both of Buddy’s children have used their own individual and unique talents to create something as precious as this love letter to their father, while also making it entertaining for an audience who didn’t know him at all. Kiki Ebsen is a highly accomplished and very talented singer. She has toured with some of the biggest rock acts in the business as a backup singer and has recorded many of her own material over the years. Her brother Dustin is an award-winning editor and filmmaker and together they have created a show full of beautiful songs with deep connections to Buddy, anecdotes about their life together, and film clips and rare family pictures that all skillfully help to tell the fascinating tale of his life.

Kiki is a brilliant performer and she warmly welcomes us into her life.

She smiles and laughs and sings and cries her way through her memories of her father in a show brought about by the discovery of an old chest in the back room of her motther’s house months after he died. In this time capsule, she found screenplays and sheet music, costumes and instruments, photos and memorabilia from Buddy’s life well before she was born. She got to know her father all over again in from these sacred pieces of himself he hid away from the world.

Photo: Cliff Lipson

Do we ever truly know our parents?

I know I still have many questions to ask mine and have so many regrets at not having taken the time to ask them while I still could. But we all think we have forever, don’t we? If life has taught me anything it’s that we don’t. Kiki and Dustin have their regrets I am sure, but they also have memories and their love and the brilliant shining life of their father Buddy Ebsen.

Photo: Cliff Lipson

The longer we all live the less we understand and the more we realize what we have lost.

“To Dad With Love: A Tribute to Buddy Ebsen” is a breathtaking thank you to a film star and a Broadway star and a father who gave his children a life they can honor and the talents to do him justice.

Photo: Cliff Lipson

Kiki Ebsen sings with the backing of a truly gorgeous jazz band who brilliantly support her sultry, smoky, bluesy voice. She sings songs her father sang from movies, TV shows and Broadway. She ends with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” a nod to the role he lost in “The Wizard of Oz” and the reason he did is just one of the many fascinating facts you will learn about the thoroughly enchanting and forever loved Buddy Ebsen.

This is more than a glimpse into a life, it is a heartfelt and tender “thank you” from a child to a father for her beautiful life. It will give you much pause for thought about your own small world of family and friends and may well make you hold everyone you love just a little closer for just a little longer.

Bravo Kiki and Dustin, thank you for sharing your father with us.

Created by Dustin and Kiki Ebsen

Performed by Kiki Ebsen

Directed by S.E. Feinberg

October 12-14 at Theatre West, 3333 Cahuenga Blvd. West, LA, CA 90068

“Villainy – Or – H.H. Holmes Own Story,” written by John Strysik and directed by Jeff G. Rack. 

Running October 3 through November 7, Wednesday at 8pm The Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd, Sherman Oaks, 91423

We are barely into October and I’m already on edge. L.A. theatre, as usual, is doing its best to scare and creep and torment me.

I am extremely grateful of course and hope to meet their chilling challenges.

The Whitefire Theatre serves up “Villainy – H.H. Holmes Own Story.” Holmes is America’s first known serial killer, and a particularly ghoulish one at that. Henry Howard Holmes was a doctor, or so he said. He built a hotel in Chicago close to the World Fair and fashioned it specifically to fill his nasty desire to control, dominate, manipulate and kill anyone that took his fancy. Rooms that were completely sealed airtight, back stairs to nowhere, narrow disorientating passageways and basements fitted with cells, torture chambers and furnaces. Once he dispatched his prey he often flayed the flesh from their bones and sold their skeletons to the local medical school. Lovely!

Henry Howard Holmes murdered at least 27 men, women and children, or rather that was the number he finally admitted to, although only after being offered a large sum of money and the eternal fame he yearned for by William Randolph Hearst who paid him to write his memoirs.

This play attempts to put us into the mind of this diabolical man, to give us a small glimpse of his “why” no matter how hard it is to face. It’s told in as twisted of a way as was the man himself. A dashing yet depraved Holmes, a man so duplicitous with absolutely everyone in his life could hardly be played by one single man. So the playwright creates two roles, one for the brazen public Holmes and one for Holmes as his own inquisitor as he sits in his cell in his final days…which is really quite brilliant.

The entire play is constructed around these final few days, with his dastardly deeds played in flashbacks. In these scenes we meet his wives and finances and lovers and the children of his closest employee Pitezel, the nearest thing he had to a friend, who he gleefully dispatched by binding him, dousing him in paraffin and setting him on fire. We see the torment and the misery he spread through his life and his total lack of empathy for anything but his own end when he was finally caught for murdering Pitezel.

It’s a dark story and not the kind of thing to take a kid to, but boy is it boldly and poetically told. The two actors playing Holmes are excellent and each finds a part of him to gloriously embody, the one just as rotten as the other. There is a particularly gruesome moment when Holmes locks his fiancé in his large office safe and waits for her to suffocate. The lights are low and Holmes walks up through the theatre listening to her sobs and pleadings from the steps of the audience as she dies. I swear the temperature dropped in the theatre and I was very, very relieved when Holes returned to the stage I can tell you. It was masterfully done.

The staging is inventive and wonderfully evocative. We are wooed by a beautifully played cello while we wait for the play to begin and it perfectly sets the scene as a cello’s woeful vibrations are oft to do. The wardrobe is also wonderful, everyone looks so beautifully their part. This makes all the difference and brings us very definitively into Holmes world of the late 1800s.

This could have been much bloodier, much more violent and flashy, but the restraint of the action and the icy focus on his wicked manipulation of the world makes it all the more terrible and delicious. Holmes was a devil in the truest sense. His life was one big con and he treated everyone like cattle to be used and then disposed of when he was done. If he thought that all his crimes would ever come to light it’s hard to say and since his death, the tale of his deeds has certainly grown much taller. He is now said to have killed more than 200. He is an absolutely perfect villain for this time of year and this play is wickedly good, wonderfully written and directed and beautifully acted. I highly recommend it.

Just don’t walk home alone afterwards…

Running October 3 through November 7, Wednesday at 8 pm https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3510956

Cast

Eric Keitel – Henry Holmes

Tor Brown – Herman Webster Mudgett & Others

McKenzie Eckels – Clara Lovering & Others

Jennifer Novak Chun – Mrs Holton & Others

Nathalie Rudolph – Myrta Holmes & Others

Tanya Raisa – Georgiana Yoke Howard & Others

Production

Produced by John Strysik & Michael Carroll

Composer/Sound Designer – Jay Woeful

Costume Designer – Shon LeBlanc

Set Designer – Jeff G. Rack

Graphic Design – Lee Moyer

Technical Director – Brandon Loeser

Cellist – Jennifer Novak Chun

Dean Productions Theatre Company presents “The Tempest,” written by William Shakespeare, directed by Rebecca Lynne. 

I absolutely love Shakespeare performed outside…in its natural state, so to speak.

So I was thrilled when Dean Productions announced they were performing “The Tempest,” which is one of my favorite of his plays. The park is such a great location, quiet and blissfully still at night, tucked up into the foothills of Burbank/Glendale. It’s really a lovely place to see a play, the occasional hoot of an owl or visitation by a curious deer adds to the wonderful atmosphere.

Susannah Snowden-Ifft (l.), Julia Stier Photo credit: Maggie Jorgensen.

This company really puts their heart and soul into every production, and I have seen quite a few of them! They always perform a very special comic short before the main event. They work with children fighting cancer and together they write a short play for the actors to perform. It’s really fun, the actors obviously enjoy it too and this year was just as precious as ever!

Caitlin Stoodley, Nick Gallagher

It’s predominantly a fairly young company, apart from a couple of more mature lovelies, but I love that. The actors are all excellent and full of the energy required to perform this lyrical and magical play. Performed as a playhouse production, the actors flit between roles and manipulate the simple set as and when needed quite beautifully. A sail becomes a beach and a trunk becomes a cave as one actor morphs from one role to another. As the story careens from ship wreck to wizardry to wandering regretful princes and lost sons and drunken servants, the actors lovingly perform their parts with a great reverence for the words and a deep sense of the irony and hilarity of this much loved, much studied, neoclassical masterpiece.

Jennipher Lewis

There is a little bubbling magic and some very gentle audience participation, which is always a joy with one of the Bard’s comedies. There are lovely songs and passionate, heartfelt flirting and I absolutely love the way they interpreted Ariel – always a dilemma and a challenge how to give life to this iconic role, you must discover this for yourselves, however!

So it’s wonderful! It’s only on for a few weeks to I recommend you get a Shakespearean move on!

Oh and it’s free…yes free, although if you have a soul you will generously donate to their charming Halloween buckets when they come round at the end.

“The Tempest” TICKETS>>

Running October 10 – October 20, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Thursday, Friday Saturday 7.30pm

Brand Park, 1601 W Mountain St, Glendale California 91201

Cast:

Nick Gallagher, Tuesday Grant, Jennifer Lewis, Susannah Snowden-Ifft, Philip Sokoloff, Julia Stier, Caitlin Stoodley.

Production Team:

Director – Rebecca Lynne

Musical Director/Composer – Michael Turnblom

Costume Designer – Melissa Wilson

Lighting Designer – Kassie Winkler

Sound Designer – Jeremy Leung

Stage Manager – Michael Carachure

House Manager – Lisa Bigelow

Publicist – Philip Sokoloff

The Victory Theatre Center presents “Show Pony,” written by Judith Leora and directed by Tom Ormeny. 

Running from September 28 – November 18, Fridays & Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 4pm The Victory Theatre Center, 3326 W. Victory Blvd., Burbank, 91505

Set in the rough and tumble world of advertising, “Show Pony” is a brilliantly funny and deeply perceptive glimpse into how things really work in a modern “progressive” advertising agency with its pseudo-culture of sham enlightenment, all the while stubbornly clinging to its “Mad Men” roots.

Tom Ormeny and Maria Gobetti have a knack for finding playwrights with important things to say about our world.

Bianca Lemaire Marshall McCabe

They are drawn to material that shouts loudly and defiantly about inequality, injustice and the ever emerging evidence that we have little to no control over our lives. “Show Pony” is a play that takes its place along side some of the best work I have seen at The Victory and in Los Angles as a whole.

A high flying advertising company is in flux having just merged with a smaller up-and-coming, ‘urban’ company peopled by smart and experienced black employees with their eyes firmly on the bigger and more powerful and more international accounts that whiter companies tend to hold. Conversations about race abound in a fascinating and compelling diatribe on accidental racism and thoroughly intentional sexism.

The plot is set around one particular team from this ad company formed from some original employees, two white women and two black women from the newly acquired company, meeting after hours in a conference room. They wait for their fearless leaders to show up so they can go over their next morning pitch to a new and potentially lucrative client. The leaders are no shows since it’s late and they give various week excuses. So the youngest and most hungry of the group, a sweet blonde haired pleaser, takes the lead and together with her newly met black equivalent pull together something better than the usual tired misogynistic claptrap they have been told to prepare.

Elle Vemee Sionne Elise Lizzy Kimball Bianca Lemaire Krystel Roche

Of course, there are egos and subterfuge and age-old resentments and epiphanies and life-altering treachery….but not by the talented and capable women, Oh no, by the men of course. But really, all that ridiculous male rubbish isn’t what it’s really about. Their childish, fear-driven and totally illogical lies about how the world is are to be expected and are almost excusable in a way when you look at them through the lens of the ancient and now irrelevant lore of ‘the man.’ But what I liked the most about this play is that it isn’t spending too much time complaining about the glass ceiling, its characters aren’t bent on commiserating about how tough their situation is or how hard it’s been for them. There is a little of that sure, but they shake it off pretty quickly and move on to how they can and will control their own lives and their own destiny by simply deciding to.

That’s really what power is, isn’t it? Once you realize that you can just leave and everything will change simply because it has to, that you are never really stuck in a cycle of anything if you don’t allow yourself to be. This play is about a group of interesting,  intelligent and powerful women simply saying “no” and moving on, and leaving no regrets in the dust as they do. They don’t have the time or the inclination to waste a moment ranting or regretting. When they make their choices it’s as natural and as glorious as mother nature intended and the comedy and the joy is in the realization that everything is about perception and being, and just walking away from what doesn’t work.

The characters are real, purposeful and cleverly imagined. The actors fill them out with beautiful comic timing and a loving individuality that makes you want them all to be your best friends forever. The writing is very, very clever, but the conversations still feel natural, authentic and they actually go somewhere wonderfully genuine.

It’s all set in an advertising agency, but this could be about any business in any part of this country, or many, many others. “Show Pony” is fantastically relatable and sharply, warmly and lastingly brilliant. Its characters resonate in important and memorable ways that rise above cheap confrontational maneuvers giving us heroines with nerve and courage and humor…just the kind we all need right now.

Women don’t always need a man to push against, sometimes we just need another woman to stand beside.

I highly recommend “Show Pony” at The Victory Theatre Center. Another wonderful and unique play about our crazy world…Bravo!

https://www.thevictorytheatrecenter.org  

Cast:

Sionne Elise – Tara

Bianca Lemarie – Destiny

Lizzy Kimball – Sam

Elle Vernee – Patricia

Krystel Roche – Omolola

Marshall McCabe – Walker

Production Team:

Maria Gobetti, Tom Ormeny, Katie Witkowski – Producers

Jennifer Brown – Stage Manager

Evan Bartlett – Set Designer

Carol Doehring – Lighting Designer

Lauri Fitsimmons – Costume/Props

Studio Fuse – Graphic Design

David Duarte – Sound Designer

Chelsea Sutton – Social Media

Jeff Kober – Onstage Slides, with model McCallah Moriarty

Tim Sullens – Photography

Gail Bryson – Literary Manage

Theatre 68 presents “A Flock of Macaws” written by Sam Henry Kass and directed by Ronnie Marmo. 

Running September 28 through October 20, Friday & Saturday 8pm, Sunday 3pm (Sunday Oct. 7 & 14 only)

Theatre 68, 5112 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood, 91601

Sam Henry Kass appears to be establishing himself as Theatre 68’s favorite playwright. 

His last two plays, “Lusting After Pepino’s Wife” & “Burt…A Homeless Odyssey,” premiered there to great success and now he brings us his latest work, “A Flock of Macaws,”  directed by Ronnie Marmo.

A young woman is searching for her birth mother, a mother who abandoned her as a baby at the zoo beside the Macaws exhibit, hence the title of the play.  This search has become a quest to find not only where she came from and who she is but why she was left behind.  We all have inherited traits, things passed down from our parents we didn’t even ask for.  How we walk, why we smile or how we pronounce endive.  If we grow up without our biological family, what are the chances we will have anything in common if we ever meet them and is it the cruelest of jokes that we might be exactly alike in spite of it all?  It’s not just the cute stuff that gets passed down though, what about our darkness and our despair and our self sabotage? 

Cast (L-R):  Hansford Prince and Deborah Geffner

This young woman has not had the sweetest of lives, but it wasn’t terrible.  Living in the midwest with kind but distant parents, she leads an unremarkable life in an unremarkable place.  She knew of her story of abandonment, however, so how then can we blame her for her anger and her resentment and the need to find her mother and demand a “why?”

After some searching, she finally does find her…on a bench in a park in New York, feeding the pigeons.  The daughter is angry, the mother is defensive and unrepentant, and the stage is set.

This meeting has been a long time coming so, of course, it’s all very absurd and surreal, which I am quite sure is just how this kind of meeting would play out in real life.  But this is a play and it is a play by Sam Henry Kass, so a lot of stranger than real things begin to seemingly spontaneously occur.  The mother refers to herself as if they are in an actual play and breaks the 4th wall with abandon.  As the daughter becomes more and more irate her mother,  in a bid to explain her terrible act and share a little of her guilt, introduces us all to a random male actor who she brings onstage to perform the role of various paternal possibilities, i.e. the men she was sleeping with at the time of conception.

To add to the often hilarious magical realism an actress suddenly appears who has apparently been working the box office for the show and is tired of not being on stage.  She happily plays various parts in the mother’s “staging” of the moments in her life that have brought them all to this perilous point.  Young daughter, young mother, etc., it all works very, very well.

Cast (L-R):  Deborah Geffner, Mercedes Manning and Julia Valentine Larson

“A Flock of Macaws” is a play within a play within a monumentally stressful and potentially disastrous moment in two lives where everything either of them has ever done has lead them up to this point.

Add to this the writer’s biting wit and his brilliant ability to bring our present waking nightmare of political scandal into to every single argument and you have this very funny, slightly strange and poignantly lyrical play.  The mother is relentless and abrasive but also deeply effected by this young women’s pain.  The daughter is angry yes, but I felt her longing for her mother in every single line and saw it in every defensive glance.  Both these actresses connected so beautifully, their relationship seemed real and burgeoning and heartfelt.  Everyone is excellent actually.  The roles of the actor and actress are really brilliantly and playfully performed.

Somehow all this odd behavior and these curious and questionable characters makes perfect sense when seen through the lens of a mother and daughter’s unrealistic expectations and their longing to belong.  There’s a heartbreaking depth of forgiveness and pain that is captured so perfectly by this play.  With all the mess and the regrets and the loss and the sorrow, there is also love and joy and completeness all wrapped up in a very wacky world. 

I love the way Sam Henry Kass writes.  He is brutal and poetic and bold, but the pain is always laced with love…which is what makes it real. 

I highly recommend “A Flock of Macaws” at Theatre 68.  Ronnie Marmo directs with quiet deftness and fearless abandon, believing in the words and the power of his actors.  Bravo!!

“A Flock of Macaws” is only on for a few weeks so don’t hang about and get your tickets while you can!!

http://www.theatre68.com

THE CAST

Deborah Geffner

Mercedes Manning

Julia Valentine Larson

Hansford Prince

THE TEAM

Playwright Sam Henry Kass

Director Ronnie Marmo

Producer Theatre 68

Publicist – Sandra Kuker PR

Foothill Performing Arts Council presents “The Theory of Relativity,” written by Neil Bartram and Brian Hil, and produced and directed by Timothy Jon Borquez.

Running September 21 through October 21, Friday & Saturday at 8 pm, Sunday at 6.30pm

There are few things in life that touch us more deeply that the sound of the human voice. 

Close your eyes, can you hear your mother speaking, or your child laughing?  “The Theory of Relativity” is a musical but it’s much more than that I think.  It’s a play that uses the beauty of the human voice, particularly the singing voice, to tell many stories and to connect us.  Full of wisdom and truths sometimes hard to hear but always laced with hope, the songs are sung individually and in a variety of groups and also with the entire cast harmonizing, fluidly supporting each other as they detail the darkest parts of their lives as well as the brightest.

The cast sings of attraction from afar

It’s about our journeys, our mistakes and learning how to live.  A group of young people, taking their first tentative steps into the adult world, full of fear and wonder and even some already hard-learned lessons.  They sing together beautiful and haunting songs filling the space around them with electricity and vibrations of joy.  The songs are about love and loss and finding each other.  They are about moving on from the safety of families and finding another kind of family, friends and lovers, to be a little less safe with and to find themselves in. All the songs are absolutely brilliant.

Bethany Redwood and Ricky Gals

Only the most honest actors’ voices could ever tackle this kind of openness and exposure. The whole cast is on stage the entire time, engaging with the audience and each other in a kind of hypnotizing chorus of cheer.  This group of actors has the most glorious sound.  They tumble and slide through the songs effortlessly with gorgeously individual sounds merging to this perfect harmonious timber.  Everything feels like church…in the best possible way.

This is a show that gets performed fairly regularly and I can understand why.  The characters attempt to explain life’s randomness with scientific formula and equation, but just like these ancient adages and life, in general, …it’s all just a theory.

Cast sings the final anthem

I highly recommend “The Theory of Relativity” performed by the fabulous Foothill Performing Arts Council company. 

It’s their first performance in NoHo and I do hope they decide to make us their new home.  We all need to hear beauty and hope, these days maybe more than ever and they are the perfect company to give us that hope and to keep us deep in song.

The show is only on till October 13 and Gray Studios on Vineland, so don’t hang about!!

Gray Studios, 5250 Vineland Ave, North Hollywood, 90607

https://www.ticketor.com/thefpac/upcomingevents?viewas=calendar&recurringtemplateid=129643

ENSEMBLE:

Christian Araujo, Kameron Corwin, Hope English, 

Luke Martinez, Viktor Pacheco, Jared Price,

Beth Redwood, Wayne Remington, Felicia Tassone,

Brittany Thornton, Andrea Velazquez, Cody Williams,

Mary Zastrow, Michael Dumas (Ensemble Swing)