Perry Smith
SAG
Theatre & Reviews
HOUSE OF YES
by Mary E. Montoro | ||
The Kennedy family is like royalty to the United States. England had the late Princess Diana and we had Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Even trade, right? Kennedy Onassis was the role model for girls and young women. She was poised, elegant, a loving mother and later in life a successful book editor. HOY is the story of a young woman who lived and breathed Jackie. It’s a dark and rainy night when Marty and Lesly (Matt McVay and Ferin Petrelli, respectively) visit Marty’s family for Thanksgiving in Washington, D.C. Marty’s mother, Mrs. Pascal (Perry Smith) greets them with her every present tall glass of alcohol. Her main job seems to be fleeting from one room to another and spewing out venom around her. Her son Anthony (wonderfully played by Dan Bender) is a textbook case of being a slacker. He barely moves from the couch when Marty and Lesly come in. There seems to a dark cloud looming over the family. There’s something going on. Enter Jackie-O (brilliantly played by Tanya Wilkins) who is stuck in her own time warp. Dressed in the same pink suit the real Jackie wore when her husband was assassinated, Jackie-O walks in and is delighted to see her brother and upset that he brought Lesly. Jackie immediately sizes Lesly up and down. This should have been a clue to the cute blonde to flee and flee quickly. Lesly quickly notices the soap opera magazines and books on assassinations that belong to Jackie-O. The statuesque brunette immediately becomes rattled. She screams and talks quickly. After all this mayhem and foolishness, there is no electricity so Thanksgiving is cancelled. Everyone decides to go to bed. Anthony manages to slip into his brother’s room and makes a move on Lesly, who is lonely. Her soon-to-be brother-in-law tells her that Marty is downstairs with Jackie-O. Already, Lesly’s worry gene kicks in. Meanwhile, Marty and Jackie-O resume their sibling relationship in the most disturbing way. Remember, it’s called the House of Yes for a reason. Wilkins embodies the late First Lady remarkably, with style and class. In once scene, she goes into a 5-minute spiel about how she needs her pink hairbrush not a comb because the brush adds shine to her hair. She’s obviously delusional but there is a method to her madness. Soon, Lesly realizes that she is a spectator-turned-participator in this macabre family. Her tirades and knee-jerk reactions to things that irk her are funny to watch. Her scenes with McVay makes you feel as if you’re peeking into a sensitive moment as the two become rapt with each other. Smith is wonderful as the mother who sees all and says nothing. She knows what her children are capable of and also participates in their sordid game from a distance. You got to feel for Lesly. Petrelli plays her sweet and wide-eyed in the beginning and by the end she’s a confident woman who doesn’t have to accept what’s going on. The House of Yes is a wonderful and thought-provoking production. You think about what was the real Jackie-O thinking, feeling and doing after her first husband’s death? Who was there for her? Director Paul McGee did an excellent job in making the audience feel sympathy to Jackie-O and her family, despite being vulgar. The way Wilkins goes into a heightened tizzy when her alter ego can’t find her brush is highly amusing. Also Mrs. Pascal makes it clear that she has a love for the drink that will go on despite the interruptions she gets from her brood. McGee’s eye for detail and personality quirks is wonderful. This show is wonderful. House of Yes plays on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. until Sunday July 3. Theatre 68 is located at 5419 West Sunset Blvd., in Los Angeles North Hollywood. For reservations call (323) 960-5068 or reserve online www.plays411.com. | ||
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GOLD STAR MEMBER REVIEWS: YES
"The mother was also an accomplished actor, but it takes a little while understand how twisted her character is and that it is not the actress overacting."
"The cast was great, set was great, and the direction was amazing. Such an pheonominal production! "
"...this was a fantastic performance..."
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FIVE BY TENN
A one act festival
Portrait of a Madonna
Directed by Deborah Geffner
Assistant Director: Jesse Holcomb
Perry Smith – Miss Lucretia Collins
Mark DeLisle – The Porter
Chad Addison – The Elevator Boy
Chris Johnen – The Doctor
Shannon McManus – The Nurse
Joe Dallo – Mr. Abrams
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BACK STAGE REVIEW:
Five by Tenn
The 68 Cent Crew Theatre Company at Theatre 68
March 30, 2011
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This evening of short plays is the latest of several local productions commemorating the centennial of Tennessee Williams' birth. The pieces offer an intriguing sampling of the master playwright's favorite themes. It's particularly enlightening to see characters that were clearly forerunners to those subsequently fleshed out in Williams' classic works. The five one-acts, helmed by different directors, achieve varying degrees of success.
The best script is "Portrait of a Madonna" (1944), incisively directed by Deborah Geffner. It's graced with a powerful tragicomic performance by Perry Smith as Miss Lucretia Collins, a quintessential Williams heroine haunted by guilt, sexual repression, loneliness, and ultimately madness; the crazed spinster bears a close kinship to Williams' indelible Blanche DuBois. "Auto-Da-Fé" (1941) is another compelling story of extreme repression. The suffocating control of a New Orleans matriarch (Geffner) pushes her sickly son (Joe Massingil) to commit a desperate act.
As in "The Glass Menagerie," autobiographical suggestions of Williams' relationship with his mother are apparent. Director Brionne Davis elicits excellent work from the actors. Directed by Jamison Jones, "Hello From Bertha" (1946) is surprisingly close to pure nihilism. Yet it is superbly acted by Virginia Novello as a prostitute who is physically, emotionally, and spiritually at the end of her rope, and not receiving much sympathy from the madam running the boarding house (capably played by Shannon McManus).
The brooding "Talk to Me Like the Rain…And Let Me Listen" (1953) is bolstered by Williams' poignant and sweetly lyrical speeches exploring longing and suffering. Director Lauren Patrice Nadler's production doesn't fully meet the potential of this affecting work about a couple ravaged by disappointment and poverty, stuck in a run-down hotel. Shawn Parsons gives a credible portrayal, but Natasha Makin's line deliveries sometimes lack the requisite conviction.
"The Lady of Larkspur Lotion" (1941), the loopy tale of a prostitute (Shelly Hacco), prone to self-delusion, and her encounters with a crass landlady (Heidi Rhodes) and an alcoholic writer (Joe Dallo), is interpreted by director Jeremy Aluma as a shrill farce. Virtually every line is overplayed, compromising the dialogue's lyricism and nuances of character.
Portrait of a Madonna, features another quite insane woman, Perry Smith, as the deluded, but socially aware, Ms. Collins, minutes from being institutionalized, this is not unlike a Grey Gardens type of tour de force. Viscerally moving, probably because we all know a poor old soul like her, it is the most amazing piece. Mark DeLisle plays the compassionate porter, who you can tell just wants to make sure the dusty old woman gets to the next stage of her life with some dignity, while Chad Addison plays the wispy elevator boy, who just wants to steal her records. The moment, at the very end, when Ms. Collins realizes her fate, is not to be missed, and is haunting for a long while afterward.
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GOLD STAR MEMBER REVIEWS: Portrait
"Portrait of a Madonna is about a noble, Southern woman who is just a tad kooky. I thought Perry Smith, who plays Miss Lucretia Collins, was amazing. Mark DeLisle who played the porter and Chad Addison who played the elevator boy were also really good."
"Portrait of a Madonna with a hilarious and touching Blanche DuBois character (Perry Smith) and great supporting act
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Beggars In The House Of Plenty
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT BY A FEATURED ACTRESS (DRAMA) Stage Scene LA ‘08-’09
StageSceneLA.com
What a difference a director and cast can make!
When I saw a production of John Patrick Shanley’s Beggars In The House Of Plenty about four years ago, I found myself squirming in my seat waiting for it to end. I couldn’t make head nor tail of what was going on as the play got more and more bizarre and heavy-handed. My guest and I looked at each other when the lights went back up and said almost simultaneously, “Now what was that about?” Arriving home, I did some googling and saw that at least one reviewer had raved about the production, leading me to wonder what she had seen in it that my friend and I had not.
Cut to earlier this year when I was invited by an actress friend to see a production of Beggars that she and her husband were mounting. Thinking to myself, “No way I’m sitting through that another time,” I politely declined the invitation. The production garnered some great reviews, but recalling my first experience with it, I felt I had probably still made the right decision.
Not long after that, Theatre 68 began its historic 13 By Shanley festival. I ended up seeing four of the festival’s seven full-length plays and enjoyed every one of them. One which I passed on was, not surprisingly, Beggars In The House Of Plenty, despite an invitation from director Deborah Geffner to give her take on Beggars a chance.
The 13 By Shanley festival turned out to be quite possibly the 99-seat theater event of 2009, its initially scheduled three-month run extended to five. Searching several weeks ago for a Wednesday show to review, what should pop up but—you guessed it—Beggars In The House Of Plenty? There not being anything else to choose from, I thought back to Deborah’s passionate defense of her production and decided, What the heck? The worst that could happen would be that I could say, “See, I told you so. I really don’t like that play!”
Wrong! With egg on my face, it is now time for me to eat my words.
Geffner and her superb cast did indeed have a fresh take on Shanley’s surreal semi-autobiographical tale of a young man growing up in a family the epitome of dysfunctional. Eschewing a sledgehammer approach for a lighter, more whimsical one, and with an absolutely enchanting cast of actors, Theatre 68’s Beggars In The House Of Plenty charmed, engrossed, and moved me as I had no expectation of being charmed, engrossed, or moved.
It helps that I understand “early Shanley” better now than I did four years ago—thanks to the other festival plays. I’ve begun to “get” his poetic, stagey, non-linear storytelling in a way that I didn’t before, and Geffner has directed Beggars with the same whimsical brand of quirkiness that can be seen in Theatre 68’s productions of Italian American Reconciliation and The Big Funk. The family depicted in Beggars is screwed up beyond belief to be sure, but Geffner sees them in much the same way Augusten Burroughs did his f—ed up family in Running For Scissors, proving that what may have been hell for a writer to live through does not have to be hell for an audience to sit through!
Act One introduces us to the Irish-American family of our protagonist Johnny (Dan Bender), whom we first meet as an adult-sized five-year-old dressed in one-piece kiddy pajamas and a 1950s child-sized red cowboy hat. His Ma (Perry Smith) is a downtrodden housewife, his Pops (Max Middleton) a bullying slaughterhouse worker. Older brother Joey (Michael Blum) is a sailor back on land after voyaging “all over the world” and older sister Sheila (Hailey-Ellen Agnew) is about to escape the family chains through marriage. Completing the family album is Sister Mary Kate (Elise Hodge), the family’s obligatory Catholic nun.
Shanley moves forward and backward in time, his characters occasionally revealing what’s ahead for them in life, as when Sheila tells Johnny, “I’ll have my husband Ray, and my own children. And when you come and see us, I won’t care about you very much.” And what a vivid cast of characters Shanley has created! Pops is a vicious S.O.B. who once punched son Joey “right in the face” when Joey said the F-word, and who boasts that after telling a doctor to “rip (my hemorrhoid) out, rip it the hell out before it multiplies, … I haven’t had a god damn hemorrhoid since,” a point which he illustrates with the meat cleaver he always keeps on hand. Ma is a lifelong complainer: “There’s laundry I gotta do today just like any. Always more laundry. And there’s a bum down (in the cellar) I smell. I gotta do laundry and throw out the bum.” Sheila delights in showing off the wedding dress she’s taken to wearing around the house, exclaiming “This is so exciting! Everything is so exciting! I’m the center of everything!” Full-of-himself Joey lies, cheats, and steals and is proud of it because “women love a bad boy,” yet cannot seem to win the love of a father who tells him almost proudly that “it’ll haunt you all your life, this thing between us.” Sister Mary Kate is a jolly sort of nun, yet not averse to speaking her mind, as when she tells Sheila, “Self-praise stinks, dear,” or when she raps Johnny’s knuckles upon learning that he’s been setting fires. “That’s the Devil’s job,” she explains, before poking him for emphasis.
The play’s second act focuses on Johnny’s relationship with Joey, the older brother he idolizes. We learn about Johnny’s habit of lying, of setting fires and smashing windows, behavior that is less common for him these days because “now I have language at my disposal,” a hint that like Shanley, he too may have writing in his future. Joey has by this time “seen some shit in The Nam,” shit that he doesn’t like to talk about but which has colored his life since then. Johnny too has, in Shanley’s unique, poetic voice, “licked the water off the underside of every leaf in this fucking desert.”
Finally, in the play’s last act, the spotlight is on Johnny and his Pops, who appears in a red light like a demon from hell. Why, Johnny wonders, did he and his father have to be “set against each other,” and why, when “the table was full, the places were laid, (and) everything we needed was there,” did he have to be like one of the beggars he sees in the street and wants to kick in the face “cause that’s me! Pathetically waitin’ with my fuckin’ cup.” Johnny rages at his father, “I will never think of you without being shocked by your lovelessness!”
Even as the play steadily darkens, Geffner never loses sight of its inherent humor, thereby avoiding a drastic tonal shift in the cathartic third act. In fact, though ultimately I would classify Beggars In The House Of Plenty as a drama, the laughs come fast and furious in the first act and even to a certain extent in the second, and like a number of other Shanley plays, the laughter comes from the performances rather than from the writing itself, or rather it is hidden inside Shanley’s dialog just waiting for the right group of actors to make it sparkle.
Bender is simply stupendous as Johnny. At first cheek-pinchably adorable as a 5-year-old who finds having double-pneumonia an achievement to be boasted about, Bender then becomes heartbreakingly real as an adolescent whom adults wanted “dead, broken, ruined, expunged.” Finally, letting out all his rage, the actor reveals a grownup son at last capable of fighting back against his “old man.” Bender’s is a performance of many layers and many shades and one that grows steadily richer and more powerful as the play progresses.
A trio of outstanding supporting players do absolutely beautiful work in their very challenging roles. An outstanding Middleton tempers Pops’ ferocity with humor, making the patriarch less a monster than simply a flawed human being. As Joey, Blum gives a firecracker of a performance, the neighborhood Casanova whose life experiences have turned him into a man who could snap his brother’s neck and enjoy it. Smith is a total delight as a housewife-&-mother never without a chore to take care of or a complaint to voice. (“My feet are killing me. All the Fitzgerald’s got these feet, and I’m a Fitzgerald.”) When we later see her transformed into the beautiful young woman Pops had fallen in love with, the effect is at once startling and moving. Assistant director Agnew and Hodge both do excellent work in their smaller parts.
Danny Cistone’s set for Bill W. And Dr. Bob (Theatre 68’s long-running hit) has been nicely adapted into Johnny’s family’s rundown Bronx home, and Neda Pourang’s excellent costumes are precisely the odd mix dictated by Shanley’s script.
Ultimately, it’s first-time director Geffner’s vision that makes this Beggars In The House Of Plenty work so well, where others may not have. Blessed with a sextet of actors who simply could not be better, and with an understanding of just what makes Shanley’s voice so unique, she has put together an truly splendid production, and one which turned me from a Beggars hater to a Beggars lover in the space of an hour and a half.
Opening the evening is Shanley’s short play Out West, a quirky (what else?) spoof of the movie Western genre, wittily directed by Robert Costanzo, and featuring comic gem performances by Bruce Barker (Cowboy), Denny Siegel (Dancehall Girl), Kate McManus (Heroine), Nathaniel Mathis (Bartender), and Joel Van Brunt (Gunslinger).
Beggars In The House Of Plenty is part of the 13 By Shanley festival, running through August 16. Theatre 68, 5419 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. See website for play titles and performance dates and times. Reservations: 323 960-7827 www.plays411.com/shanleyfest
–Steven Stanley
July 29, 2009
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A Very Merry Happy Kosher X-mas
Had a fun run with this show. Ran from 12/09 thru 1/10. Original play written specifically for Theatre 68 and a great group of people to work with.
STAGE SCENE LA REVIEW:
Steven Stanley's Review click below:
"Those looking for laughs aplenty in early 2010 need look no further than Theatre 68’s latest treat. Regardless of your religious affiliation, you’ll have a very merry happy kosher time!
BACKSTAGE WEST REVIEW:
"Smith's obsessive public servant is a hoot."
Reviewed by Les Spindle
December 30, 2009
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Playwright Mark Troy's efforts to offend every ethnicity, religion, institution, and tradition imaginable bring to mind vintage Mel Brooks. Though there are inspired moments in the world premiere staging of this frantic farce, the end result is less than the sum of its scattered parts. Despite director Ronnie Marmo's energetic staging and the spirited efforts of a superb cast, the overwrought script runs out of gas before it sputters to a contrived conclusion.
The story takes place two days before Christmas in 1978 at the New York Public Library, depicted in a marvelous two-story set by designer Danny Cistone. During a seemingly typical day at the library, presided over by a Gestapoesque spinster librarian (Perry Smith), two dimwitted would-be thugs (Joey Russo as Carlo and Jeremy Luke as Tony) attempt an ill-advised robbery. At gunpoint, they demand to receive the day's late-fee proceeds. They are taken aback to discover that the booty is only $14—well short of the hoped-for $14,000. As an alternate plan, they take the library patrons hostage.
Lapses in logic are plentiful in what follows, but that might not matter if the broad burlesque humor were consistently funny and if the excessive number of characters running in and out didn't lead to tedium. The characters include a perky Jewish nurse (Shelly Hacco); her Muslim fiancé (Abhi Trivedi) and her disapproving rabbi father (James Engel), who masquerades in a Santa outfit to spy on them; a nerdy bookworm (Paul McGee); a blind Frenchman (Adam Silverstein); a roller-skating pregnant woman (Liz Bassford); Tony's streaker girlfriend (Katy Jacoby); and an African-American hooker (Monica Quintanilla) and her pimp (Greg L. Glass), plus several more.
As the egocentric punk with a Tony Manero strut and a Pee-wee Herman brain, Russo proves a fine farceur, and he's well-complemented by Luke's moronic marauder, who's so dumb that his girlfriend's request for a china doll for Christmas prompts him to purchase a black-market Chinese baby for her. Trivedi and Engel's frenetic encounters provide plenty of laughs, and Smith's obsessive public servant is a hoot.
Presented by the 68 Cent Crew Theatre Company at Theatre 68, 5419 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. Dec. 4–Jan. 31, 2010. Fri.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. (Dark Jan. 1–3.) (323) 467-6688. www.theatre68.com.
