Theater Reviews: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Mr. Kolpert, Aftermath

Also Stealing Buffalo, Firehouse and more

Comments (0) By L.A. Weekly Theater Critics Thursday, Feb 10 2011

AFTERMATH Elliot Shoenman's comedic drama studies a widow named Julie (Annie Potts), and her almost adult children, still struggling to come to terms with her husband's suicide three years previously. More like an emotionally raw drama with a sprinkling of good laughs, Shoenman's play unfolds like a typical 1950s kitchen-sink drama, the strip-mining kind where secrets and recriminations are laid bare and the obligatory catharsis ensues. This notion is visually supported by co-producer and set designer Gary Guidinger's realistic kitchen- and teenager-bedroom set. What isn't necessary is the slide show across the back flats repeatedly displaying the pathetically inadequate suicide note Julie was left with, which also illustrates her children's passage to adulthood. Everyone in the capable cast gets at least one monologue, from hostile son Eric (Daniel Taylor), to mild-tempered daughter Natalie (Meredith Bishop), to their father's former best friend and Mom's possible new boyfriend, Chuck (Michael Mantell). With her pixie haircut and thick N.Y. accent, Potts wavers from droll to distraught, only sometimes stridently overcompensating for first-night nerves and an ensemble performance that occasionally seemed to lose its rhythm. At its best, the incisive dialogue volleys back and forth like an enthralling game of tennis. Mark L. Taylor directs this slice of dysfunction well. A guest production at the Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., L.A.; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; through March 13. (310) 477-2055, odysseytheatre.com. (Pauline Adamek)

More About

BUT NOT FOR LOVE This long one-act by Matthew Everett, commissioned by the Playshop Theatre in Meadville, Pa., tackles the hotly contested subject of gay marriage. Eleanor (Krystal Kennedy) and her brother Ephram (John Croshaw) are getting married in a double wedding — and both are marrying men, turning the event into a media circus, with protestors, news vans and cops camped outside the church. Eleanor and Ephram's husband-to-be, Patrick (Andy Loviska), are political activists who want their wedding to be a public statement, while Ephram and Eleanor's fiancé, Roland (Chadbourne Hamblin), resent having their private lives turned into a political spectacle. Things are further complicated by Patrick's brother (Nick Sousa), who's a religious zealot, determined to prevent the wedding by any means necessary, and the minister, known as the Duchess (Natasha St. Clair-Johnson), who's a postoperative transsexual. And Duke (Patrick Tiller), the cop assigned to monitor the demonstrations, is strongly attracted to the Duchess, unaware of her gender change. The production, helmed by director Richard Warren Baker, is most successful in its quieter, more human moments than in its strident political declarations, when it topples over into melodrama. The events are not always credible, but there are strong performances from Sousa, St. Clair-Johnson and Tiller. Renegade Theatre, 1514 N. Gardner St., Hlywd.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 6 p.m.; through March 14. (323) 960-4443, plays411.com/forlove. (Neal Weaver)

FIREHOUSE Unlike police officers, who are so often feared or mistrusted, firefighters almost always engage the appreciation and respect of the people they serve. Playwright Pedro Antonio Garcia's message-minded melodrama jump-starts around the community's perceived betrayal of that covenant, and the pressure brought to bear upon a firefighter named Perry (Kamar de los Reyes) to make a bogus choice between loyalty to his unit and loyalty to his Puerto Rican ethnic group. A 20-year department vet, Perry is on the cusp of retirement when a crisis erupts at the South Bronx firehouse after a colleague named Boyle (Gerald Downey) rescues another firefighter from a burning building but leaves behind a 12-year-old child. Boyle steadfastly maintains he didn't see the girl for the smoke, but his credibility is open to question — in no small part because of his personal history as a former cop who was tried and acquitted for shooting an unarmed civilian. Whereas the community, represented here by Perry's fiancée, criminal defense attorney Aida (Jossara Jinaro), is up in arms, most of Boyle's buddies give him the benefit of the doubt and pressure Perry to do the same. Garcia gleaned aspects of his story from real-life headlines in this effort to offer up an intrepid examination of how our native prejudices cloud our judgment. Too often, however, the characters seem mere profanity-riddled mouthpieces for one side or another's point of view, a problem exacerbated by Bryan Rasmussen's overheated direction. Most discrepant is Jinaro's counselor-at-law, unconvincing as a perspicacious professional not only by virtue of her miniskirted and otherwise revealing attire but in her strident insistence that Perry take her side for personal reasons rather than principled ones. Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks; Fri., 8 p.m.; through April 29. (323) 822-7898, theatermania.com. (Deborah Klugman)

GO A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM Though critics and theater folk may blanch at yet another production of Shakespeare's romantic dream-comedy, Mark Rucker's staging reminds us why it remains the most popular of Shakespeare's plays. The story of four lovers intertwined with faeries, royalty and crude workmen sidelining as thespians is probably the most accessible of all classics, with surefire laughs that work in almost every production. In Rucker's take, the events materialize in an exciting pastiche of varied moments of 20th-century pseudo-European society thrust into a slyly homoerotic mosh pit of punk-disco muscle sprites ruled by powerful bi-curious Oberon (Elijah Alexander) and his Rolling Stones–esque servant Puck (Rob Campbell). Every line of the apparently uncut text is delivered with clarity and humor by a highly skilled cast. But the real star is Cameron Anderson's intense yet functional set, which begins as a huge white expanse before taking us on a whirl down into the center of the Earth, leaving a gorgeous wooded path and, at times, a wooden flying boat out of the imaginary world of Wynken, Blyken and Nod. This stunning set is all the more remarkable as it depends simply on old-fashioned stage rigging rather than show-off hydraulics. Splendid costumes by Nephelie Andonyadis and consummate lighting by Lap Chi Chu complete the picture, while composer John Ballinger and choreographer Ken Roht perfectly marry sound and movement. South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa; Thurs.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2:30 & 8 p.m.; Sun., 2:30 & 7:30 p.m.; Tues.-Wed., 7:30 p.m.; through Feb. 20. (714) 708-5555. (Tom Provenzano)