After 20+ years of viewing, reviewing, and championing live theater in Los Angeles, I am always happy to go back for a taste of how the art form is faring in my almost decade-long absence. Last week I was most impressed by a production of The Spitfire Grill by Actors Co-Op, a much-admired, Hollywood-based company affiliated with the First Presbyterian Church. Since I had seen and enjoyed a production of this same James Valeq-Fred Alley musical a month ago in the Greater Boston area, I have to conclude that this is pretty much a guaranteed property as long as it’s cast with sincere actors with great voices. Both productions were.
As Percy, the bitter, alienated ex-con working out her disaffection with life (and her parole) in rural Gilead, Wisconsin, Hannah Howzdy led with a moody Kristin Stewart vibe and a soaring alto that anchored this rehab story in solid reality. The entire narrative, in fact, is an exercise in group rehab, with each of its seven characters caught in a particular psychological trap that time spent in the titular restaurant serves to heal in the end: an elderly woman battling long-held guilt; a married couple at cross purposes; a local lawman who yearns to see the world. I found every characterization to be rich and full, particularly Lori Berg’s heartbreaking loner, the café’s owner, and Caitlin Gallogly’s full-throated, fully-felt wife who learns agency from her friends. Even more impressively, the songs – folk/pop that falls delicately on the ear with meaningful lyrics – were delivered in the context of character, not tacked-on, concert fashion. The whole thing wrapped up without sappiness or condescension, kudos to director Bonnie Hellman’s taste and good humor. If work this good comes out of a faith-based company, thank the Lord for it.
Some 15 miles to the east, A Doll’s House, Part 2 was staged as part of the 100th anniversary of the fabled Pasadena Playhouse, which was enduring some rocky times when I left town a few years ago. I’d heard a rumor that they’d turned things around, and Jennifer Chang’s staging lent credence to that (as did the fact that, just announced, they’d paid off their rent, so the building is now self-owned). Lucas Hnath’s accomplishment with this script is prodigious: It honors the Ibsen original even in the face of some gentle spoofing, while hinging on the horns of a dilemma that plays directly into urgent concerns of the present day. As Nora Helmer returning to Torvald’s home, Elizabeth Reaser plausibly created a woman who’d grown a spine over 20 years yet with palpable traces remaining of the doll-wife she’d once been. The character’s desire to formalize the divorce that her husband had never gotten around to filing sets off sparks in all the others, and Chang’s casting proved impeccable here: Kimberly Scott as the ancient retainer harboring long held grudges, and Kahyun Kim as the abandoned daughter with her own scheme in mind, proved excellent foils to Reaser in Nora’s quest to complete her identity. And perhaps best of all was Jason Butler Harner as the hapless Torvald, caught between rage and shame as his current choices seem no better than the old ones. “I can’t win! I can’t fucking win with you!” he explodes; Harner made the moment intensely real and heartbreaking. That Chang and designer Wilson Chin placed some two dozen audience members in tiers against the back wall contributed to the intimacy, as well as to the play’s inquisitional air. Really well done.
Speaking of rumors, when I informed three separate friends of my plan to see Network in the Valley, each of them responded with a variation on: “The Group Rep? I hear they’ve gone downhill.” I don’t know about that, but the Group’s presentation of Lee Hall’s adaptation of the 1976 Paddy Chayefsky Oscar winner proved D.O.A. with the bafflingly literal directorial choices of Tom Lazarus. This was a production under the thumb of furniture: It lumbered along as actors dutifully swung a couch away from the wall then back again, or toted a restaurant table and chairs in and out, for scenes barely running a minute long. Didn’t Aaron Sorkin and The West Wing teach us about the excitement that a walk-n-talk can bring? Lazarus and company didn’t get the memo, and the resulting pace was funereal.
Ironically, as doggedly faithful as this production was to the trappings of the original Sidney Lumet film, most of the cast seemed never to have viewed it. Of course no one would expect (or even want) carbon copies of its fabled performances: Faye Dunaway’s demonically sexual network piranha, William Holden’s achingly weary veteran newsman, Robert Duvall’s explosive exec, Beatrice Straight’s bereaved, betrayed wife. But surely the Group actors could have been inspired to play more than attitudes. (They had a surprising amount of line trouble, too, this late in the run.) Bert Emmett’s Howard Beale did manage to spin off his character into something original and true –just as manic as Peter Finch, but somehow more relatable and sad – but he was not well served by direction that demanded we Hear And Attend Everything He Said. It’s well known in the biz that Chayefsky’s rants need to be delivered hard, fast, and loud; again, this production didn’t get the memo.
Finally, I had heard good things about an original work at Pacific Resident Theatre (PRT) in Venice, where I had spent many a pleasant evening over the years, including an absolutely first-rate revival of Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version, and the first staging of A View From the Bridge that convinced me of the merits that Arthur Miller’s melodrama is thought to have had. But Fostered will not inspire similarly happy memories. A putative farce that attempts to get serious, even maudlin along the way is almost certainly doomed, and this mess about a family beset with kinky sexual quirks offered neither laughs nor empathy, names withheld to protect the guilty. I will always gravitate back to PRT when I’m in town, however. No swing-and-a-miss should ever preempt hope for the next at-bat.