Sex, God and Little Armenians

Generational divides, from Hollywood to NYC

Comments (0) By Steven Leigh Morris Wednesday, Aug 23 2006

...continued from page 1

Woman friends Beatrice and Azniv (Maro Ajemian and Anoush Nevart) confide to each other in church and nudge their punch lines about moving up to Glendale. Azniv wants to open a vegetable shop. Suddenly, Beatrice has cancer. (There has to be a more original way to elicit pathos.) A teenager (Johnny Giacalone) drops out of high school to work at Jons grocery store. He’s torn between the integrity of one friend (Salem Michael) from a wealthy family, and the sleazy appeal of a street thief (RB Dilanchian). In an incident surrounding some stolen money, he makes a decision to follow his moral compass for no particular reason that’s dramatized. Earnest and observant, Little Armenia banks on characters so diligently researched that they border on stereotypes, slogging through intergenerational conflicts with a romanticism that’s almost ingratiating. What’s missing are the unexpected turns that make any story memorable. Dylan Thomas’ play Under Milk Wood — a portrait of a village, filled with poetry and idiosyncratic characters — comes to mind, as does the oddball charm of Liev Schreiber’s film Everything Is Illuminated, about an American visiting his ancestors’ Ukrainian village and landing upon some harrowing truths about generational divides. As part of a community-outreach effort, the theater commissioned Armenian writers Lory Bedekian, Aram Kouyoumdjian and Shahé Mankerian to develop this script about the neighborhood surrounding the theater. Little Armenia is a nice try, a snapshot that really needs to be a portrait.?

BANG! | By ANTHONY MORA | At the SIDEWALK STUDIO THEATER, 4150 Riverside Drive, Toluca Lake | Through September 22 | (818) 558-5702

Is that a gun in your hand, or are you just pleased to see me? Tetlow and Simonini in Bang! (Photo by 4Seasons-Photography.com)

Ashot and his mother looking for the future in Little Armenia (Photo by Ed Krieger)

More About

LITTLE ARMENIA | By LORY BEDEKIAN, ARAM KOUYOUMDJIAN and SHAHÉ MANKERIAN | At the FOUNTAIN THEATER, 5060 Fountain Ave., Hollywood | Through September 3 | (323) 663-1525