[NoHo Arts District, CA] – A NoHo Arts theatre review of FRANK’S This Ends Badly: A Night of Short Plays at the Echo Theater Company on Wednesdays running through May 13.
This Ends Badly is an evening of five short plays by Frank Demma, Marlane Meyer, John Pollono, Benjamin Weissman, and Sharon Yablon. This was my first time at this annual event it was not at all what I was expecting. I see a lot of short plays. Solo plays, short form in groups of work, The Fringe, the 30-minute play festival. Short plays are a great way to flesh out an idea from one scene to story, and it can be a place to begin. But, just like a good short story, short plays can work just as well, if not better than a 90-minute, three-act structure. Especially if they are as ingenious as the plays in This Ends Badly: A Night of Short Plays.
Honestly, I was absolutely blown away by the stories, the performances and the general level of brilliance of these plays and the incredible actors performing them. In a way, the title relieves you from any arduous expectation and frees you to sit back and relax your way through hilarious situations after heartfelt awkwardness and surreal and existential crises.
All these plays are about people, whatever the place they are put in or the pressures they endure. People being good, people being bad, people being crazy and sexy and irritating and engaging and just about anything a human could be, give or take. These actors go out on the stage and give us absolutely everything they’ve got. We believe each and every one of them and absolutely everything they say. In the minutes they, and the stories they inhabit, belong to us, we experience profound playfulness, irreverence, crescendos of self discovery, beautifully revealed journeys, and most importantly, truth.
This Ends Badly: A Night of Short Plays is ultimately one of the most entertaining evenings I have ever spent in any theatre, let alone a small one in Atwater Village.
Each play feels like taking an album out of its crisp sleeve for the first time. Smelling that smell. Feeling that luscious newness, the excitement, the longing, your heart knowing that before it even begins, it’s going to be good. That’s how these plays unfold. Each one so different from the next. Dying, flirting with one’s hero, standing still and speaking truth, all of them disparate and hugely entertaining. Forays into the heart of what is human…mistake after error after foible after echo after laughter and love. It’s all there in these short plays, hidden, in plain sight, and hardly the subject at all. But present.
How gorgeous and phenomenal and how desperately needed. Wow. Thank goodness for art and for people such as the Echo Theater and Frank to bring their souls on stage for us. I cannot recommend This Ends Badly: A Night of Short Plays enough…truly excellent!!! You have to go and see this incredible collection of stories you never knew you needed in your life.
Tickets:
https://echotheatercompany.ludus.com/index.php?show_id=200524351
When:
Wednesdays
Wednesday, May 6 at 8pm
Wednesday, May 13 at 8pm
Where:
Atwater Village Theatre
3269 Casitas Ave, Atwater Village, CA 90039
The Team
Featuring five short plays by Frank Demma, Marlane Meyer, John Pollono, Benjamin Weissman, and Sharon Yablon.
The … and an all-star cast of local LA favorites, including Shawna Casey, Victoria Davidoff, Frank Demma, Suzanne Fletcher, Edward Hoke, Zaya Kolia, Silas Weir Mitchell, Conor Murphy, Jennifer Pollono, Michael Redfield, Keith Stevenson, Wes Walker, and more.