Defiance at the Pasadena Playhouse

In John Patrick Shanley’s new play Defiance, three soldiers have to decide how to deal with one very bad choice. Similar to Doubt, Shanley’s tremendous Catholic conundrum, the characters are placed in circumstances where the hierarchy is paramount and authority dictates morality. Again, this set-up works in Shanley’s favor, but as the play continues and the repercussions of the General’s misstep become clearer, one can’t help but feel that Shanley has stacked the deck. The result reads more like a morality play than an intellectual drama.

Sure, the questions raised are interesting ones- what happens when a neutral party is forced to act, what makes a good man great, is the destruction of one man necessary when it benefits the greater good? The play covers a lot of ground and the pacing is brisk. It would be better, however, if director Andrew J. Robinson sacrificed the pace to give the characters some subtext. Each of the four principals in the play read as types, not people, and when forced to act, they act exactly as expected. The noble Black captain? Noble. The slimy chaplain? Slimy. The misguided colonel? Misguided. And the long-suffering military wife? Just guess. The most egregiously one-sided portrayal is the ever-moralizing Chaplain (Leo Marks) who lacks any sympathetic edge. His alcoholic father back-story seems like an afterthought. Even when delivering soliloquies, an advantageous position to win the audience’s sympathy, he irritates. This makes his ability to manipulate the witty and hardened Captain, played with understated aplomb by Robert Manning Jr., more puzzling than chilling.

Unlike Doubt, in which the characters are so utterly bound by circumstance that they employ every possible strategy and still fail, the characters in Defiance have plenty of choices that go unexplored. Instead, we get the central plot point late in the game, giving all the characters just enough time to do the right thing before the curtain.

In Defiance, Shanley has stacked the deck but never undercuts the expectations set up for the audience, leaving us exactly where we were 90 minutes prior. We still like who we were told to like and forgive who we are supposed to forgive. Like the characters, we never have the chance to think for ourselves.

Iphigenia Crash Land Falls On The Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart (A Rave) with The Son of Semele Ensemble

Angelinos are no strangers to the “personal as public” idea of celebrity. As the blogosphere expands, anyone with a digital camera and a lack of restraint can create a furor over the latest “nip slip” or celebrity make-out session. It seems appropriate, then, that Iphigenia crash landed here.

Iphigenia Crash Land Falls On The Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart (A Rave) addresses the shocking cruelty and thirst for prestige shared by the Greek gods and the very rich and powerful in our own time. In this multimedia phantasmagoria, cameras are ubiquitous- following the stunning heroine (Sharyn Gabriel) as she flees from her filicidal father.

Based on the Greek myth of Iphigenia and Agamemnon, playwright Caridad Svich has updated the story to the setting of Juarez, Mexico, a town ripe for epic allegory. Juarez has become famous over the years as home to an extraordinary number of unsolved murders of young women. A potent symbol of ineffective government and pertinacious misogyny, Svich places Agamemnon here as a general up for reelection- one he believes he can secure through a sympathy vote after the murder of his only daughter. Keen to the plot, the teenaged Iphigenia escapes, and the play follows her journey amid the distasteful characters that populate the city.

The expertly cast Iphigenia is a striking high-society beauty. She is a familiar type to us Americans, a spoiled daddy’s girl who would gladly trade her Prada bags and limelight existence for some TLC from her folks. But she is also a survivor with a keen insight into the responsibilities of the damned, possessing a refreshing mix of naivete and world-weariness endemic to those with public upbringings. She wastes no time stripping to her slip and bare feet as she distances herself from the media brouhaha surrounding her disappearance.

Despite the speed of her flight, however, the media accompanies her and the personal evolves (or devolves) from the public to the Pop. This transition is personified in the magnetic Achilles, played terrifically by newcomer Doug Barry. Svich reimagines Achilles as a Goth pop-idol, complete with torn fishnets and an androgynous air. With a look that mirrors the great acts of the scene- Placebo and The Cure come to mind immediately- it is in his solemnity and flippant depth that Iphigenia accepts her martyrdom. He confesses to being HIV positive before Iphigenia gives him her virginity, while two cameras provide close ups of their facund monologues-cum-pillow talk. A lesser actor would have turned Achilles into a painful parody, but Barry’s earnest portrayal makes for a compelling character. His soaring voice, too, was a welcome presence in the vast warehouse space.

The endless journeying is indicated, as one would hope in this space, with simple use of light and set pieces. The rave setting is carried through the whole play to great effect with the help of DJ minstrel Edgar Landa. It is here at the rave where Iphigenia finds the invisibility she craves. A tide of emotion is evoked with a well-timed siren bleat and lazer light flash. The rave is a place where we can all be anonymous amid the throngs and invisible inside the cacophony of stimulation, where you can no longer distinguish between the “thumpa thumpa” of the music and the beating of your own heart.

Iphigenia Crash Land Falls On The Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart (A Rave)
Son of Semele Ensemble at the Studio Space
Written by Caridad Svich
Directed by Matthew McCray

The Forbidden Om at Lucent Delirium

Last weekend 65 artists gathered in a warehouse on the western most edge of Downtown LA and turned it into a neo-happening. The scene was a collaboration between The Do Lab and Lucent Dossier, two resident groups of the Artists District. Not quite a rave, not quite a scene, not quite a circus, nor performance art, Lucent Delirium was a little bit of each, and then a bit more.

The centerpiece of the evening was the “vaudeville cirque" Lucent Dossier and their performance of The Forbidden Om. Following a stunning fashion show by skingraft, The Forbidden Om tells the story of damaged creatures of light rediscovering their powers to overcome their dark invaders. It appears to be the abridged version because the segues between scenes seem to be designed to cleanse the mental palette rather than actually carry the audience along with the story. And coming in at just under 20 minutes, there weren’t many moments for pause.

Most of the choreography is improvised, with only a couple of fully blocked moments. After the initial confrontation between the two beings, the mood vacillates between sexy and threatening a couple of times before culminating in the obligatory artist-commune soft-core orgy. Considering the varied skills of the dancers, it probably wouldn’t have hurt to include a few more choreographed moves if only to solidify the capricious energy.

Though differing in technical prowess, all the dancers hold the requisite passion for the story and the act, making up the difference in this case. The troupe demonstrates the earnestness that only a commune of warehouse dwelling artists can properly convey. The story is quite secondary to the exercise and that’s just fine.

As a dance piece The Forbidden Om doesn’t break new ground and would be easily deconstructed by an apt dance reviewer. However, The Forbidden Om is strong artistic achievement in collaborative art as Scene Theater.

Assuming that most, if not all, of Lucent Dossier’s members are professionals in the art and entertainment fields, it seems clear that the whole event of Lucent Delirium and the others like it are temples in which the members (and audience) can restore their creative spirits.

The next link in the love in/happening/club scene/rave chain, this kind of multimedia, multidisciplinary night of revelry is popping up around the city. Adding a level of interactivity and high-art influenced entertainment to the expected thumpa-thump, these events attract artists, hippies, bohemians, and freaks that normally wretch at the idea of the Hollywood club scene. One can only hope that there are some empty warehouses left over after the Downtown L.A. revitalization for these scenes to thrive.

Huck and Holden at the Black Dahlia

A required text for most sixteen year olds across the country, The Catcher in the Rye has one of the most captivating and misunderstood protagonists in American literature. Holden Caulfield is revered by his devotees as a James Dean-esque teenage rebel. Upon rereading him a decade or two later, however, most of those adolescent fans find a much more disturbed and lonely boy, clad in a prep school blazer. This is what makes The Catcher in the Rye so captivating, and what makes The Black Dahlia's production of Huck and Holden fall so flat.

Rajiv Joseph's freshman (in more ways than one) play introduces us to Navin, a culture-shocked Indian student spending undergrad in the States before returning to his Calcutta home for an arranged marriage and Hindu provinciality. His plans take a turn, however, as he discovers The Catcher in the Rye and the charming librarian, Michele. Michele, too is gaining new awareness as she flips through the Kama Sutra at work. The premise is terrific, and it's delightful to see oft-unrepresented Indian characters on stage. However, the play soon crumbles under the weight of wooden performances.

Suffering from a dearth of subtext, the characters each parody themselves, never raising their relationships to literary heights. Navin's fantasy protagonist is a sheik from his Indian prep school whom he idolized. He seems to pop up when Navin is in a tough spot, acting as his untapped masculinity. Holden Singh resembles the literary Holden Caulfield only in dress- turban notwithstanding. How he ends up in a frat boy's room discussing porn and "waxing ass" is anyone's guess. The real Holden wouldn't be caught dead in such a place. Danny Pudi instead plays Singh as a lothario, a worldly and cynical prep school drop out. The charming Pudi seems able enough in the role, and one can't help but wonder where the director was while the character developed. Also charming but misled is Michele. Raina Simone Moore's performance is brutally one note, never straying too far from casual upbeatedness, even when describing her boyfriend's infidelity (Frank Faucette) and grandmother's death. The only time Michele's voice is unrestrained is when she's singing- which, is sadly only one verse. If she were perhaps to find the musicality in her character's voice, her performance would have appeared more dynamic.

As the mousy protagonist, Navin, Kunal Nayyar’s occasional vulnerability raises his performance above self-parody. While most of the jokes are cross cultural zingers like silly grammar and wardrobe choices, Nayyar handles the dialogue earnestly. From the outset the audience is cheering for him to lose the big V and assimilate like a good American college student. The deus ex libris, Kali, played by Jameelah McMillan can't decide whether she's a sharp tongued sista with a penchant for stirring up trouble or a venerable goddess with a fierce bloodlust. Either would have been interesting, but it seemed like director Claudia Weill couldn't decide and split the difference. The result is jarring and mostly silly.

Curiously, the other title bearer, Huckleberry Finn, is conspicuously absent from the whole play. What would be more interesting is if the Huck and Holden of the title were given their due. The play lives at the very end, as Navin reads from his book report, which he can't help but interrupt as his brain reels over the events of the previous night. Ultimately, it seems a shame that it was his essay that told the best story, and not the play he lives in.

Huck and Holden

By Rajiv Joseph

Directed by Claudia Weill

Playing at the Black Dahlia Theatre

Welcome to Revelry By Night!

Yes, another blog on the LA scene. Here at Revelry by Night, you'll find a selection of theater reviews, events, and performance listings from the LA area. I review about one show per week- sometimes more, sometimes less.

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~Rev. L Rhee