Anton Chekhov meets Aaron Spelling in Leah Nanako Winkler’s Two Mile Hollow, an Artists At Play World Premiere whose first act is so deliciously, risk-takingly hilarious, one can’t help wishing there were about a quarter-hour less of Act Two.

 Like Spelling’s Carringtons, the Donnellys of Two Mile Hollow have more money than many a small country, and like just about anyone in The Seagull, they spend most of their time talking about how miserable they are.

 Take the twice-divorced Mary (Julia Cho), for whom a return to the recently sold family estate means being catapulted back through a myriad of memories, topped by the death of her movie star stepfather Derek.

No wonder then that when things get her down, Mary pretends to be a bird, the better to convince herself that all is right in Two Mile Hollow despite a beloved parent’s loss and a constant battle with her weight, a sore subject with her imperious widowed mother Blythe (Emily Kuroda).

 Adding to Mary’s woes is her alcoholic, overly medicated, speech impediment-plagued stepbrother Joshua (Parvesh Cheena), whose sad, empty husk of a life leaves him feeling worthless, depressed, and self-destructive, nor is it any help that her younger stepbrother Christopher (Tim Chiou) has everything Mary and Joshua lack, including worldwide fame as the stunningly handsome dentist lead of the hit TV sitcom Drillings.

Completing Two Mile Hollow’s cast of five is Christopher’s pretty young Asian personal assistant Charlotte (Jessica Jade Andres), born in Long Dong, China but schooled in New Haven.

 Conspicuously missing from today’s family reunion is longtime family maid Yessica, back in her “home country of Buenos Aires,” or so Blythe insists (perhaps a bit too loudly to be fully believed).

If all this sounds rather like a Carol Burnett Show spoof of a TV classic, it is … with one major difference.

 The entire Donnelly clan, as lily white as any Chekhov or Spelling cast, are played by actors of color, and Charlotte by the cast’s token Caucasian, adding extra bite to what is already a caustic satire of white privilege, and never more so than when Blythe rails about the “tiny” new Chinese manager of her favorite French restaurant or when she calls Charlotte “that Mongolian girl” (with Mary insisting she’s “Filipiño”) or when Christopher dreams of playing an Asian movie hero who looks, sounds, and behaves like he does, i.e. white.

 Fearlessly breaking rules right and left, playwright Winkler even goes so far as to have Charlotte and Joshua suddenly launch into a full-fledged Broadway-style song-and-dance duet and later have her join Mary in a deliberately pretentious poetry-slam “dance of female solidarity.”

Unfortunately, while Two Mile Island might work to perfection as an under-90-minute one-act, at nearly two hours including intermission, it ends up outstaying its welcome, and never more so than in an extended second-act sequence lit entirely by a couple of hand-held flashlights, a little of which goes a long, long way.

Still, there is considerable pleasure to be had at the Lounge Theatre, not the least of which are the five fabulous performances elicited by director Jeff Liu, most especially by a magnificently scene-chewing Cho, who can take the word “No!” repeated ad infinitum and make it almost worth the price of admission.

 Kuroda (in grand diva mode), Cheena (unleashing his inner brat), and Chiou (movie-star hunk perfection) chew pretty darned scrumptiously themselves, leaving a never-better Andres to play Two Mile Hollow’s only sane-ish (and non-white) character with subtlety and depth.

 Production design kudos are shared by scenic designer Justin Huen and properties designer Michael O’Hara, who suggest Two Mile Hollow’s past glories on a matchbox stage.

Add to that Ashphord Jacoway’s character-perfect costumes, Martha Carter’s expert lighting, and Howard Ho’s topnotch sound design and original music (with special kudos for his show-stopping “Extraordinary”) and you’ve got a production that makes the most of a shoestring budget.

Brandon H. Cheng is stage manager. Eddie Liu, Rosie Narasaki, and Rona Par are understudies.

Though Two Mile Island could benefit greatly from a fifteen-minute trim in its second half, there’s more than enough relish to be tasted as the Donnelly’s eat it up and spit it out to make it worth a visit to the Lounge.

The Lounge Theatre, 6021 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles.
www.artistsatplayla.blogspot.com

–Steven Stanley
October 27, 2018
Photos: Nardeep Khurmi

Tags: Artists At Play, Leah Nanako Winkler, Los Angeles Theater Review