[NoHo Arts District, CA] – A NoHo Arts theatre review of Twisted, written by Chris DiGiovanni, directed by Marc Antonio Pritchett, produced by Garry M. Kluger, and running through May 3.
Twisted is a psycho-drama, a thriller, and a deeply drawn character piece. It is a story about the tension between ambition, loyalty and betrayal, and an intense examination of whether or not the familial ties that bind are enough to hold us together when life gets rougher than we could ever have imagined.
Scilla Claroe is a brilliant and highly successful writer. She specialises in biographies of men whose lives seem utterly surreal to most of us, whether by their politics, their lifestyle, their historical impact or their legacy. For her newest novel, she has chosen a mass murderer and death row inmate, Renton Downey. Downey is close to his final sentence and is openly courting several other authors to tell his story, but she intrigues him for reasons that become more and more apparent as the play unfolds.
Downey’s crime was committed at a university campus. He stood on a raised area of the parklike grounds and shot as many students as he could before being tackled by a nearby student, an act that clearly saved many, many lives. That student, Jason Abernathy, is the son of Scilla Claroe and the strange and difficult threads that entangle the three of these disparate people shatter any perceptions they may have had of who they are and of the path that has led them to this critical and unfathomable place.
How is a person made evil? How can they live in the same world as us and understand it to be so very different? What does it take to kill, and how can we know what any of us is truly capable of? To judge the character of another person is to measure it against one’s own. So how could we ever know anyone then?
The murderer, the writer and the son are all caught up in the web of truth and lies and excuses and outrage. But in the end, only one of them is heading for the executioner.
Twisted is such a fascinating story. So many judgments are made, destroyed and remade. The truth is never really the point. It’s all about perception and our own habit of tolerating the absurd and seeing past what is clearly crazy because it could never ever happen to us…
What brilliant perceptive performances these three actors discover together. The play is not told linearly. We discover as the writer discovers. We are shown the crime and the lead up to it as flashbacks, but through the eyes of whom? The murderer? The son? The projections of the writer who will go to any lengths to protect her son, even in the face of the horrors of reality?
And then there is her urge to tell this story. The son’s disgust that she could and the murderer’s slow realisation that it matters not who writes anything about him. He will soon be dead.
So what was the point of any of it? I think that was the biggest takeaway for me. The entirety of this wonderful tense, visceral play with gorgeously specific performances and the conclusion they and we arrive at in the end was, so what? But that is fitting. A man plans his revenge on the world, and afterwards, nothing changes for him. Any fame is short lived and hardly enjoyable in any real way. And those he manipulated will live on after he is gone, and how will he ever know the end of his story? He has no control. None of us do.
Twisted has more questions at the end of it than at the beginning. Again, it feels like this was the point. How very very clever. To not tell us why. To leave all questions unanswered. Even and most especially for the writer. Who has tried her entire career to understand her subject. Not only does she not know Downey, but his dance calls into question every life she catalogued. Every subject she has dissected could have been entirely a projection of her own needs. Nothing could be real. None could be known. For the son, he will never be as important as his mother’s needs, and for the murderer, nothing he has ever done matters more than what is about to be done to him. Brilliant.
But it’s the performance that held me enthralled throughout. Regardless of the clever story, the exquisite casting, and the lightness with which the audience perceives the director’s touch. This all feeds the story and the actors. Honestly, I wanted to sit in my seat and watch the entire play again immediately. But sadly, that’s not how theatre works. At least not yet, so I must settle for memories of something wonderful. Bravo!
Tickets:
https://theatrewest.org/on-stage/writers-in-residence-series
Where:
Theatre West
3333 Cahuenga Blvd W. Los Angeles
When:
April 3- May 3
Friday and Saturday at 8:00, Sunday at 3:00
The Cast
Crystal Yvonne Jackson, Isaiah Frazilus and Monty Renfrow.