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Sometimes a book of short stories is a welcome diversion from the usual
industrial-strength novels. Just as an evening of short one-acts can
provide a satisfying evening at the theater. And that’s just what
playwright Helena Weltman and producer/director Pavel Cerny have brought
to the stage of the Whitefire Theater in Sherman Oaks.
The six vignettes, collectively titled
Love, Sex, and Violence Too is subtitled
Or False Advertising,
since there is mostly yearning for love, rather than love itself, and no
sex or violence at all.
Although the first act gives sex a good college try as a
young man (Allen Yates) brings home a waitress (Olivia Peri) from a
nearby café. He slips into a gaudy red dressing gown and plies her with
wine in a paper cup. But she is looking for a “meaningful
relationship,” while he is just looking to get laid.
In the next scene a married couple (Lisa-Beth Harris and
Joshua Grenrock) are having a late-night drink after a triumphant party
celebrating the publication of her book on baking. He is heaping her
with platitudes, which only annoys her, and very soon their marriage is
falling apart right before your eyes. (Grenrock was the “brilliantly
poignant” lead clown---the man with an air of desperation and a rubber
face---in Circus Welt, which director Cerny
adapted from Leonid Andreyev’s He Who Gets
Slapped, presented earlier this year. Grenrock has been
nominated for a 2010 Ovation Award for that role.)
Adrian Lee Borden and Desi Jevon are strangers marooned
in a stalled elevator in “Boring,” the third vignette. In contrast with
the recent play Elevator, in which seven
people are stranded in a large elevator, a situation that doesn’t seem
at all frightening or claustrophobic, this elevator in “Boring” encloses
the two actors in a very small square with little room to move around,
and so their getting-to-know-you conversation is close-up, personal, and
bizarre.
“Thirteen Months, Two Weeks” is how long Lacey Rae has
been wasting the time of her psychiatrist, Robbin Ormond. She lies,
contradicts herself, and needles the doctor with confrontational
personal questions, much to the psychiatrist’s consternation. In
desperation, the psychiatrist protests, “You hear my interest as a
judgment…”
In the next scene Robbin Ormond plays the psychiatrist
again, this time alone on stage talking to her own psychiatrist. This
vignette is the best of the lot, beautifully written and gloriously
acted, as Ormond expresses her frustration and anger with her clients
and deals with---and avoids---her own personal dramas. “I can’t take
life any more, it’s too painful,” she says.
And finally, ending on a lighter note, Lacey Rae meets a
dancer (Eddy Hawks) in a hamburger joint and with headwaiter Ward
Edmondson, the three “tap dance to survive,” as Eddy puts it.
While the six vignettes differ in tone and intensity,
they make for an engaging mix---even though some scenes are considerably
better than others (and sometimes make more sense). For the most part,
the overarching themes are loneliness, disappointment, and estrangement,
but surprisingly, there is a good deal of humor in the midst of all the
pathos. And director Cerny has done a good job of bringing out the best
in his actors. Making it a very pleasant outing for a Sunday afternoon.
Love, Sex and Violence Too
will be performed every Sunday at 2 p.m. through October 17th at the
Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd., in Sherman Oaks. Call
866-811-4111 for tickets.
