Party at Ground Zero
‘The Pavilion’ and ‘Abigail’s Party’ bring on the storms
By Don Shirley
Party on? Unfortunately, many parties are more off than on. Those can be enjoyable in the theater even (and especially) if they’re excruciating in person.
Two just-opened productions are set at parties gone bad. In both plays, the theatergoers have more fun than the fictional partygoers, yet the playwrights’ approaches could hardly be more different.
In Craig Wright’s hyper-theatrical The Pavilion, set at a high school reunion, a narrator (Chris Smith) talks to us about cosmic meanings. He also plays so many quickly sketched supporting roles – of both genders – that it’s as if we’re at a reunion in Greater Tuna.
However, the former Cutest Couple (Kristin Chiles, Tim Hamelin) are the focus. Their parting, at age 17, was less than cute – she got pregnant, and he fled to college, leaving her to face an abortion without him. She eventually settled for a boring marriage, but she remains childless. Now her ex-boyfriend is full of regrets, and she’s full of resentments. But time never turns around, we’re informed. A reconciliation appears unlikely.
Maybe to accommodate these particular actors, director Obren Milanovic sets the action at the 10-year reunion of this Midwestern small town’s Class of 1998. The play, which is reaching L.A. after many productions elsewhere since 2000, is usually set at the 20-year reunion.
The idea that irrevocable decisions were made as teenagers would seem more authentic and emotionally potent if the characters were almost middle-aged instead of in their late 20s – farther from easy fertility and convinced that they had withered for two decades instead of just one. Many people in unhappy early marriages radically change their lives a few years later – witness the title character in Educating Rita (see Stage reviews).
Still, the relatively underage Chiles and Hamelin are convincing in their angst. Smith, playing everyone else, creates a chain reaction of comic punctuation marks – and as the narrator, he also intones the play’s more serious, lyrical moments with a sense of understatement that wards off incipient pretentiousness. This ambitious narration is a virtual homage to Thornton Wilder, who did this kind of thing better, but Wright’s no slouch at conjuring brief phrases that ponder big issues.
When Wright left Minnesota to write for TV in L.A., his theatrical friends reportedly mourned his loss. Meanwhile, many of his previous plays began appearing in L.A.’s sub-100-seat theaters. They’re disparate but usually quite engaging at some unexpected level (Orange Flower Water, Recent Tragic Events, Grace, Lady).
With one of the country’s most prolific and successful playwrights at their doorstep, L.A.’s major theater producers should entice Wright into creating and introducing plays here, in his new home town. Perhaps he can use L.A. to express his theatrical visions.
Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party, this weekend’s other party play, became a sensation in 1977, when its initial production was televised in the U.K. Here, however, despite Leigh’s fame as a filmmaker and a 1994 L.A. production, it has mostly remained an obscure footnote. Julian Holloway’s acidic staging might change that.
While the unseen Abigail, 15, hosts a party nearby, her divorced and distressed mother (Cerris Morgan-Moyer) retreats to a smaller get-together hosted by Beverly (Nikki Glick) for their new neighbors (Phoebe James, Jonathan LaPaglia). The two married women are loud and chatty. But the men, especially Beverly’s workaholic husband (Darren Richardson – another actor, like those in The Pavilion, who looks too young for the role), are not natural party animals.
The party initially seems swamped by suburban trivia, but it eventually explodes. Leigh’s verite style is diametrically different from Wright’s, but Leigh also wades into issues of life and death that aren’t what you would expect as a party favor.
The Pavilion, Lyric Theatre. (323) 939-9220. lyrictheatrela.com. Closes Oct. 5.
Abigail’s Party, Odyssey Theatre, West L.A. (310) 477-2055. odysseytheatre.com. Closes Oct. 19.
For more reviews, go to lacitybeat.com, click on LA&E and Stage.
Published: 08/27/2008
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