The Rage Fairy

By
Samantha Simmonds-Ronceros
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The Rage Fairy Is Haunted By The Murdered Girls Who Have Been Murdered By The Murderer. Cast (L-R): Lauren Adlhoch, Holly Anne Mitchell, Madison Hubler, Ayanda Dube. Photos by David Dickens.

A theatre review of Ballview Entertainment’s production of  “The Rage Fairy,” written and directed by Antonia Czinger, and produced by David Dickens, running through March 13.

Imagine, if you will, a world in which a super human, magical being can be dreamt into existence by shear force of will and need.  A slightly Dickensian childless couple, in need of someone to slave away in their grocery store at their beck and call, summon this “Rage Fairy” into being. At first, things work out fairly well, she helps, she stocks shelves, she runs the register, but, as the name implies, this fairy isn’t always the perfect employee.  She is sullen and pouting at one moment and exploding with opinion and passion the next. Like the nuttiest of teenage angst, all balled up into a winged, secquinned, sparkling and slightly scary girl. Unpredictable, unrelenting and totally un-returnable.

The Rage Fairy Tries The Murderer's Special Shake Cast (L-R): Holly Anne Mitchell
The Rage Fairy Tries The Murderer’s Special Shake Cast (L-R): Holly Anne Mitchell. Photos by David Dickens.

But the Rage Fairy isn’t only alive for the mom and pop store, she has her own wants and dreams and needs. She needs to be loved. In fact, she wants to be adored, and she really really wants a boyfriend.  While she ponders this one day, she runs into what she perceives to be the absolutely perfect man. Cute, sexy, covered in someone else’s blood and, at that moment, available. The murderer.  

The Murderer Sizes Up The Rage Fairy Cast (L-R): Isaac Tipton-Snyder
The Murderer Sizes Up The Rage Fairy Cast (L-R): Isaac Tipton-Snyder. Photos by David Dickens.

He personifies, of course, that which we all desperately want to attain – partner in life, in sex, in love. And she tries so very very hard to make him who she needs, ignoring the killing and the rough sex and the disappearing for days on end, all to convince herself that she is happy, that she is worthy of love. Or, to second guess herself as to why she isn’t…given how perfect this guy so obviously is. It must be her fault, of course, if it isn’t working.  Remind you of any of your past relationships yet? Then the murdered girls begin to show up in her dreams and things kick up a notch.

“The Rage Fairy” is a surrealist, manic, insane wet dream of play. It tinkers with what is real and what we all have going on inside of our heads at any given fundamentally anxiety ridden moment.

Our own mocking narrative driving our furious self doubt and unrealistic expectations about any and every misshapen relationship we try to force into our perfect, heart-shaped mind holes.  

The Rage Fairy Cast (L-R): Holly Anne Mitchell
The Rage Fairy Cast (L-R): Holly Anne Mitchell. Photos by David Dickens.

Yet, “The Rage Fairy” is a brilliant spiraling cataclysmic ode to love and the Fairy herself, around which all revolves, and it is is utterly dazzling. Holly Anne Mitchell is sublime as the Fairy.

Crazed, sweetly vulnerable and in the end frighteningly, darkly controlling. While looking for the perfect man, she becomes the perfect girlfriend in fact!

I love absurdist theatre, and this is it, but it is also full of magical realism and is as vivid and cunning as it is smart. It is every bad relationship you had ever wished perfect.  

Every late night hook up you deeply regret and yet still somehow pine for. It is our twisted urges and our blithering hearts all wrapped up in one poignant moving and wonderfully anarchic play.  And I bloody loved it. 

Everything works.  Each character, each scene, the pacing, the lighting, the story, the bitting sarcasm and the deft direction. “The Rage Fairy” is a great play gorgeously performed and it would be your shame to miss it!! 

When:

February 19 though March 13
Saturdays and Sundays at 8.30PM

Where:

The Sherry Theatre

11052 Magnolia Blvd. North Hollywood, CA 91601

Tickets:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-rage-fairy-tickets-246986261557

Cast:

Holly Anne Mitchell (Rage Fairy), Isaac Tipton Snyder (Murderer), James Fahselt (Bad Boyfriend/Detective Goodman), Megan Colburn (Fortune Teller), Cassandra Stipes (Mom), Max Zumstein (Pop), Lexi Stein (Sponsor), Morgan Lorraine (True Friend), Madison Hubler (Murdered Girl/Rage Fairy Understudy), Lauren Adlhoch (Murdered Girl), and Ayanda Dube (Murdered Girl)

Production Team:

Written and Directed by Antonia Czinger

Producer and Lighting Design by David Dickens

Production Company:  Ballview Entertainment

Sound Design by Trevor Reece

Set Design by Isaac Tipton Snyder

Costume Design by Antonia Czinger

Graphic Designs by Freda Jing

Production Still Photos by David Dickens