[NoHo Arts District, CA] – A NoHo Arts theatre review of Playhouse West’s Standing By, written by Norman Barasch and directed by Wolfgang Bodison.
Playhouse West has been a NoHo legend for the past 40 years or so and one of the highest-regarded acting classes in Los Angeles. Many, many stars have graced its stage and still do, Playhouse West’s ethos is that an actor must keep working on their craft…it’s not just about the gig. The work done in class, with fellow actors in between the work you get paid for, is where careers are really made.
They take all this energy and creativity and produce plays regularly at their theatre and their latest production is Norman Barasch’s Standing By. It’s a romantic comedy really. Two people, Ellen and Jeffrey, meet on a plane, and at first, they seem to be utterly opposite, a truly unlikely coupling. And yet, somehow they are drawn to each other amid the chaos of their lives and they fall in love.
Set in the borrowed New York apartment of Jeffrey’s very successful Broadway playwright friend who is away in London, the play explores the absurdities of compatibility, the ‘falling’ in falling in love and the sheer terror of it all. It’s really a one-in-a-million chance that Ellen and Jeffrey meet. A crazy series of events brings them together and blind faith turns what could have been moments and then nothing into potentially a lifetime together.
Ellen has leukemia…which ups the terror factor of course. This entire play is set in the few days it takes for them to meet, for her to find out her remission is over, for them to drive to Connecticut to meet her parents, and for them to both fly to Texas and begin her chemo. Ellen fights Jeffrey’s unending positivity almost every step of the way.
Perhaps it’s the impending doom that ignites them both. Perhaps they both are caught up in the romance of their airplane meet cute, or perhaps it really is fate, or kismet or whatever else you hang your hat on. Needless to say, the high-octane pace of it all is highly infectious!
These two actors are really wonderfully cast. They are lovely, normal, people. Sweet, attractive, funny, clever and totally engaging. They seem like polar opposites – Ellen cool and together, Jeffrey ADHD on steroids. Both earnest, both authentic, and both extraordinarily believable. For this play to work we must fall for them as they fall for each other and I have to tell you that I did. I think the entire audience did. By the time Ellen’s illness is relieved I was already fully invested in them both, thanks to some phenomenal performances and wonderfully invisible direction.
Standing By is a hugely entertaining play. But it takes really excellent actors to lift it off the page and make it real. Ellen and Jeffrey are such brilliant characters. Full of virtue and vice, vulnerable, interesting and compelling. Bravo to these fine actors for packing them full of life and making them real.
Standing By is running for a few more weeks and I highly recommend it. Let’s support our local NoHo theatres, we only have a few remaining! And let’s encourage wonderful, funny, heartrending work like this!
Cast:
Erin Hadfield (Ellen), Abraham Arias (Jeffery)
Tickets:
https://www.onstage411.com/newsite/show/play_info.asp?show_id=7160
When:
September 21 – October 6
Saturdays at 7pm
Sundays at 2pm
Where:
10634 Magnolia Blvd, North Hollywood, CA 91601