[NoHo Arts District, CA] – A NoHo Arts theatre review of Beverly Hills Playhouse’s Years to the Day by playwright and director Allen Barton, starring Jeff LeBeau and Peter Zizzo, and running through November 30.
I am never bored at the Beverly Hills Playhouse. Every play I see is entirely unique and always asks interesting and sometimes uncomfortable questions. Years to the Day is no exception. A simple sit-down with two old friends from college becomes a deeply complex and emotional uncovering of truths.
These two, Jeff and Dan, are mid-50s. That’s a complicated age for all of us, and Jeff and Dan are feeling all kinds of things as they mourn their youth and catch up on six years of their lives in a couple of hours in a coffee shop.
That they meet in a coffee shop, I found to be a testament to their relationship. Not dinner, not at one another’s homes, a coffee shop with take-out cups. They originally met in college, and they must have spent plenty of time in places like this. So for them it might seem a logical choice, neutral ground, not too much of a commitment, easy to leave at a moment’s notice. For the audience, it spoke volumes.
No wonder it had been six years since they had been in the same place. They both have big news. Divorce, familial betrayal, a coming out. But what’s much more interesting, I think, is how they feel about each other and how easy it is after so much time apart to forget who they really are. We all grow and change as we mature, but the basic building blocks of a person remain the same. Sometimes the simplest relationships, those built on laughter and pivotal times in our lives, are the ones that endure, as long as expectations and boundaries are understood.
I have friends who I’ve known since college, high school and even earlier. But the late teens and early 20s, when we truly discover who we think we are, can form bonds between people that are hard to break, no matter who we become in later life. No matter how far apart our lives take us or break us.
Years to the Day explores why we still love people who, if we met now, we would probably never be friends with. What is it about the connection that we cannot part with, and how is it possible that we can forgive them of so many sins?
More than family. More than lovers. More than ourselves even. In the end, I find the longer I live, the more I don’t need to know details. If I love someone, I just do. Life becomes infinitesimally smaller, doesn’t it? The further along we go…
There are some pretty big revelations in the time we spend with these guys. On the surface, they seem quite different. One uptight in a business suit. One casual with his cross-body man bag. Both lonely in their own ways, both sad, and both eventually forgiving. It’s a cold world, and we need connection, and we really need to be known.
Years to the Day is really about knowing a person so well if you hadn’t seen them in a decade and they knocked on your door at 3am you would probably help them bury a body…or two.
YEARS TO THE DAY doesn’t skip the hard stuff. The anger and resentment, the uncomfortable familiarity. Knowing a person well enough for them to know all your secrets, or at least in this case, thinking that you do.
It is effortlessly excellent, with actors so perfect and so genuinely each other’s alter egos, that every single word sings. Jeff LeBeau was in fact, playwright Allen Barton’s inspiration for the role of Jeff. So this is really somewhat of a homecoming for the play as well as for Jeff LeBeau. Peter Zizzo is a regular at the Beverly Hills Playhouse and absolutely magnificent in every role I have had the pleasure of seeing him play, including this one.
In short, Years to the Day is a brilliantly entertaining and hilariously candid conversation between two old friends facing the realities of mortality and the diabolical stresses of being men, hurtling towards irrelevance.
It is an intense and sometimes chilling journey we take with two extraordinary actors born to play these utterly riveting and unforgiving roles. And every second we spend with them as they tear into each other, give each other nothing and everything, and find their bond once again is faultless, meaningful and incredibly real.
What an impressively honest and gorgeously written play, deftly directed and beautifully acted. This play is a gift. Don’t miss it!!!
When:
November 1-30
Friday and Saturday 8pm and Sunday 7pm
Where:
The Beverly Hills Playhouse
254 South Robertson Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90211
Tickets:
YEARS TO THE DAY The Cast
Starring Jeff LeBeau as JEFF and Peter Zizzo as DAN.
YEARS TO THE DAY Team
Writer: Allen Barton
Director: Allen Barton
Producer: Mia Christou
Set Design: Mia Christou and Collin Bernsen
Lighting Design: Derrick McDaniel
Stage Manager: David Bello
Graphic Design: Visible Ink
Special thanks: Bailey Williams, Esther Treadway
|Publicity & Marketing: Sandra Kuker PR (Sandra Kuker-Franco)
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