SNAPPY "PICTURES" HAS NEIL SIMON'S HUMOR AND HEART
Top
of the cream actors (from L) Susan Kovitz, David Alexander Johnston and
Lucille Petty stir up Invisible Theatre's "I Ought To Be in Pictures."
There
was life before cell phones and laptops. We know this because
Invisible Theater is playing Neil Simon's “I Ought To Be in
Pictures,” with actors using an actual typewriter and a telephone.
Kind of a shock to see, especially that typewriter. So noisy. How can
a writer think with all that clatter going on?
No
matter. From out of all this low tech chaos, director Susan Claassen
and associate director Fred Rodriguez have created a lighter-than-air
comedy laced with loving sentiment in a top cream cast of Lucille
Petty, David Alexander Johnston and Susan Kovitz.
Simon's
play debuted in 1980, telling the story of Herb (Alexander) who ran
away from his New York wife and family in the early Sixties, beating
the hippies to California and starting his arty life in Los Angeles
as a writer for TV and the movies.
The
play opens with the arrival at Herb's cluttered West Hollywood
bungalow of his feisty 19-year-old daughter Libby (Petty).
This
is a huge break-out performance for Petty. The role calls for her to
enter as a petulant teen angry at this father who abandoned her
without a second thought and never made any attempt to stay in touch.
Working
her way through fifty shades of outward revenge and hidden remorse,
Petty is always completely believable. She does this with a genuine
inner energy, the soulful kind, not just a lot of jittery surface
body language.
Johnston,
for his part, matches her scene for scene as the man who has been her
reluctant father for 16 years, feeling guilty but not guilty enough
to make amends.
Once
the belligerent daughter and this blustering defensive father see
each other face to face, you can feel them both begin to change. It
isn't something you see, but something you feel out in the audience.
Providing
the balance in this ensemble trio is Kovitz as Steffy, the free-love
girlfriend of Herb, willing to bide her time without any strings
attached. Within the play's plot machinations, she becomes the
straight-person for both Libby and Herb.
This
is Neil Simon, after all. Jokes are the rye bread and sauerkraut that
holds everything together. The lack of a decent delicatessen in Los
Angeles becomes a running joke for Herb, ever a New Yorker at heart.
What
we get is an evening of excellent theater with lots of bubbly fizz
but, down under the ice cubes, a touching insistence on the
importance of family.
“I
Ought To Be in Pictures” continues through May 1 with performances
at 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays, at
Invisible Theatre, 1400 N. First Ave. An additional 3 p.m. matinee is
April 30. All tickets are $30. For details and reservations,
882-9721, or visit invisibletheatre.com