As these play-lets are so brief, their premises are essential, and the inspired, clever concept of Mary Eileen O’Donnell’s In Recovery features six or so fairy tale characters
NIGHT MIRACLES: Theater Review
By Ed Rampell
The Actors’ Gang’s latest offering, Night Miracles, is a theatrical decathlon of 10 10-minute vignettes with various degrees of success that feature different casts and playwrights per mini-play tackling diverse themes. The two-act production with an intermission is more hit than miss, so I’ll focus here on the former, rather than on those I could have lived without, and will do so in order of presentation.
As these play-lets are so brief, their premises are essential, and the inspired, clever concept of Mary Eileen O’Donnell’s In Recovery features six or so fairy tale characters who have gathered for their regularly scheduled (or is it?) group therapy session. As they await upon the arrival of their therapist, the thespians amusingly riff on their storybook personas, such as an angsty Zoe Molina as Little Red Riding Hood, who has to put up with a flatulent, obnoxious Humpty Dumpty (Adam Dugas). He derides Goldilocks (Jolene Hjerleid) as a “Bear Fucker” – apparently, our man Humpty graduated from the same finishing school as Trumpty Dumpty. Cihan Sahin’s projections depict images of each character as they traditionally appear in children’s picture books, and his imagery is intermittently projected upon the brick walls of The Gang’s Ivy Substation throughout the two-hour or so production.
Although this fractured fairy tale has good fun playing with our preconceived storybook stereotypes of the dramatis (or, perhaps, “comedis”?) personae, as its title alludes to, In Recovery pokes fun most of all at the only non-make-believe part, played by Guebri Van Over as Deborah, the therapist. Ms. O’Donnell holds her powder until the neurotic Deborah finally shows up and then the bard fires at the whites of her eyes, as the notion of therapy and analysis are cleverly lampooned in this rather hilarious scenario well directed by VJ Foster. Physician, heal thyself, indeed! As Goldilocks (Jolene Hjerleid) might say, this brief piece of stage porridge is “just right.”
Jolene Hjerleid returns as Bo in another bagatelle penned by the redoubtable Ms. O’Donnell, a longtime Gang stalwart. In The Job Ms. Hjerleid plays the female third of a trio of self-important, Beckett-like sketchy characters who, as in Godot, are waiting for a big shot to show up so they can get to work. The way they palaver and carry on while the threesome cool their heels gives the contrived impression that they are preparing to execute a Topkaki-ish heist that will enrich them. Once Jonesy (Chad Reinhart) arrives, there’s an absurdist, O’Henry-like ending that gave me a good laugh, although some members of the audience seemed puzzled by this sketch directed by Adam J. Jefferis.
Holy Portnoy! Sixteen Summers is a solo show written and performed by Ayindè Howell, directed by Gloria Isabel Briseño, with musical accompaniment by Guebri Van Over on the flute (which she pipes periodically throughout Night Miracles), with Megan Stogner and Jimmy Berry providing percussion. This is an amusing vignette that’s an adolescent’s ode to onanism, as he cums (literally, if not clitorally) of age.
Zoe Molina is back as Judy in Ms. O’Donnell’s two-hander, Punch and Judy on the Coast Starlight. Like her In Recovery, the playwright has more fun playing with beloved characters that have delighted children of all ages since 1662. While they are presumably traveling from Seattle to L.A. aboard the titular Amtrak train (or are they framed by puppet show stage, instead of a train window?), the eponymous puppets are portrayed as a longtime show biz couple, their relationship fraying over the centuries. The vignette directed by Brent Hinkley is well-acted, as Ms. Molina and J. Claude Deering as Punch move back and forth from being all-too-human to a state of puppetry, with puppets and scenic elements designed by Chris Bell. And watch out for that crocodile!
The Actors’ Gang and its courageous co-founder and Artistic Director Tim Robbins have been known for taking risky if laudable public stands on issues of the day (on- and offstage), such as in Embedded, Robbins’ early scathing critique of the Iraq War and a supine MSM; Robbins’ bold take on the Bush regime’s pursuit of torture in an au courant stage adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 (BTW, the most frightening novel I ever read); mounting the antiwar plays Bury the Dead by Irwin Shaw and The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, book by Daniel Berrigan; presentations of Ubu the King by Alfred Jarry and Dario Fo works such as Accidental Death of an Anarchist; et al. Theatergoers who delight in the Theater of Revolt (as Robert Brustein called it) – especially as we enter the MAGA-iavellian age of Trump-erialism – will be happy to know that at least two of Night Miracles’ vignettes feature vintage Actors’ Gang social criticism (as does The Gang’s upcoming class struggle play Ybor City, which opens late February).
But that’s not to say that Game Show and Nun Fight are mere pamphlets – they are very funny if searing dramatizations of capitalism and religion. In Game Show, Ayindè Howell returns to the stage with Jacob Dodson as hosts of a wacky gameshow in wild, glitzy costumes designed by Rynn Vogel. The goal of the game is to perform desperate deeds in order for three contestants clad in prison jumpsuits played by Chad Reinhart, Madison Davis and Pat Salway to get out of the crushing debt that has reduced them to being paupers, little more than feudal serfs. As they go to extremes to be forgiven from the debts they’ve incurred through medical bills piling up, interest accumulation and so on, there are loads of laughs – although they may stick in your craw because this play-let parodies a predicament all too familiar to many Americans consigned to the contemporary counterpart of debtors’ prisons. Bravo to writer/director Adam Dugas!
Night MiraclesWritten and directed by Willa Fossum, Nun Fight may be Night Miracles’ most outrageous offering. All hell breaks loose at a funeral service for a nun, who, as it turns out, was actually despised by the other members of her order. Ken Palmer plays the late, not-so-great Sister Roberta in drag. Sexual repression and harpooning organized religion are recurring Actors’ Gang themes, and this is The Gang at its anarchic, raucous, hell-raising best. The onstage antics of the seven performers harkens back to this theatre company’s hi-jinks in productions such as Harlequino and the more recent Holiday Humbug. Nun Fight features some partial nudity, and like Sixteen Summers, is not appropriate for children, so leave the tykes at home. Nun Fight is the most good fun vignette in Night Miracles, and along with Game Show, they alone would be worth the price of admission.
If Nun Fight is devilish, Ms. O’Donnell’s Two Angels Walk into a Bar is heavenly. Again, this playwright plays with popular tropes of traditional characters, in this case the short play’s eponymous angels, who are getting sloshed at a New Yawk saloon. The angels are played by Jimmy Berry and Patrick Salway, who are respectively named after other angelic characters famed in pop culture, Clarence and Gabriel. Chad Reinhart is the no monkey business bartender impatient with his inebriated if heaven-sent patrons, Jonsey. This witty piece is helmed by Jeremie Loncka, and features a sort of special effect, with the costumes designed by Rynn Vogel (who also created the actors’ apparel for the rest of Night Miracles’ cast members).
The Gang’s cavalcade of ten vignettes ends with the Fellini-esque Ghost Light, written by Caroline Redekopp and directed by Cihan Sahin. Guebri Van Over returns with three other thesps in this vignette that uses one of Tim Robbins’ favorite theatrical affectations, commedia dell’arte masks. Night Miracles’ offerings range from the exhilarating to the exasperating, but overall, it delivers a miraculous night at the theater and its program, with original artwork by Tip Scary, is a collector’s item.
Night Miracles is being performed at 8:00 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and at 2:00 p.m. on Sundays, through February 8 at The Actors’ Gang Theater, 9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232. For info and tickets: (310) 838-4264; https://theactorsgang.com/.
