The Actors Workout Studio Presents “Peggy’s Song,” written by Jim Garrard.
Produced by Lisa Howard Cerone & Conrad Dunn
Directed by Conrad Dunn
EXTENDED through Saturday, March 23rd @ 8pm Sunday, March 24th @ 4pm
The Actors Workout Theatre, 4735 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood, 91602
This is a fascinating story. A widow with much more curiosity than the local police hires a detective to find the identity of the body of a young woman found in the wreckage of her husband’s plane, alongside him.
Were they lovers? Why was he 6,000 miles from where he was meant to be? Was her entire marriage a lie?
A good deal of this play is the wife’s character directly addressing the audience about her predicament. The sadness, the humiliation, moving house to get far away from wagging tongues, coping with not only the death of her husband but the potential reality of his infidelity and with a women who could pass as a girl.
But she gets mad as she tries to get over her loss and get through her pain. Her obsession to discover who the girl was brings her much closer to her dead husband and uncovers a part of his life she could never have imagined.
Her life, her losses, finding herself alone at 50, her guilt at surviving her husband’s death and the recent loss of her young son are all played out in broken, breathless, halting monologues quite brilliantly by the lovely Lisa Howard Cerone. The detective, a slightly bumbling and sweetly aging, scruffy heartthrob, is also beautifully portrayed by the sublime Conrad Dunn -a cross between Harrison Ford and Peter Falk with a dash of Humphrey Bogart.
The two characters spiral around each other in ever decreasing circles in kind of a delightful “will they won’t they” dance. Less “Body Heat” and more “Shirley Valentine,” all set to the beat of this strange, unfolding mystery.
It’s really, really excellent. Funny, alarming, familiar, unsettling, poignant and brilliantly and believably performed.
It’s a one-act and feels like it should be more. But perhaps because it’s so well done we want to see where these two end up, how the mystery is solved and the wife can let go, blameless and wiser…Bravo!!!!
It’s not a long run…so don’t dawdle!!!
*Note – The role of Jack Patterson will be played by Conrad Dunn on 2/17, 2/23, 3/3, 3/9 & 3/10 and by Gregory Niebel on 2/16, 2/24 & 3/2
Starring Lisa Howard Cerone, Conrad Dunn & Greg Niebel
Author: Samantha Simmonds-Ronceros
Samantha Simmonds-Ronceros is a Theatre and Food Writer and Filmmaker living in Los Angeles.