from your truly.
Overall the production gets an A, the best staging so far of a Pelf masterwork.
The Pasadena Playhouse is top drawer venue, light years beyond the junior college multipurpose room where I caught Terminus Americana.
The cast was commensurately excellent, stocked with working actors enjoying the opportunity to flash their chops outside the constraints of sitcom walk-ons & toothpaste commercials. The lead bore an eerie resemblance to Pelf (a less grizzled version with more hair) which sharpened the impact of the autobiographical bits for the two rows of seats populated by family and friends.
As far as the script, it was an evolutionary leap forward. The full compliment of Pelf obsessions were on display but they were buoyed by an underlying humanity and fundamental optimism largely absent from earlier works. The foundation of his writing shifted from sympathizing with the destruction to questioning it, which I think helped fuel the wave of positive reviews.
And as always it was very, very funny, or as funny as a play about escalating paranoia & retaliation in Republican American could be.
Pocket review from his dad: "I never come off well in these things, do I?"
No comments:
Post a Comment