Clementine, Maddy, and Antonia are women on the verge of a nervous breakdown in North Orange, New Jersey circa 1960 in Jami Brandli’s BLISS (or Emily Post is Dead!). That they’re also Clytemnestra, Medea, and Antigone reincarnated is one reason Brandli’s take on mid-20th-century suburbia works considerably less well than it would if she had stuck to satire. The other is the play’s two-and-a-half-hour running time.

An opening sequence that has the three Jerseyites seeking advice from soon-to-expire etiquette guru Emily Post sets a heightened-reality tone that the play’s three leading ladies capture to perfection under Darin Anthony’s assured direction.

Clementine (Ann Noble) hides a disastrous marriage behind a Stepford Wife smile while dulling the pain with prescription meds, a habit she shares with her one and only friend Maddy (Jacqueline Misaye), married to a man no better than Clementine’s brutish hubby, and unfaithful to boot.

 It doesn’t help Maddy that her Hawaiian origins have made her the neighborhood pariah with no one but Clementine ever bothering to show up at her weekly teas.

 Last among the Post-loving threesome is orphaned high schooler Antonia (Becca Gordon), forced to hide her forbidden love for an African-American classmate from the domineering uncle with whom she lives.

 The tormented trio’s outcast status pales in comparison, however, to that of new-girl-in-town Cassandra (Jasmine St. Clair), not only a lowly unmarried office worker but a “Negress” to boot.

 If Clementine, Maddy, and Antonia’s ancient Greek origins haven’t been at all obvious up to this point, such is not the case with Cassandra, not when the god Apollo (Andrew Carter) shows up at her bus stop looking scrumdiddlyumptious in a torso-revealing golden cape, gold lame loincloth, and virtually nothing else.

It turns out that Cassandra’s been assigned a mission, to break a millennia-old curse and in so doing help at least one of the three woebegone women to turn her life around.

 Completing the cast of characters is gynecologist Dr. Smith (Carter), the man Clementine hopes will provide the key to a new life of remarried bliss if only she can convince Cassandra to do some seducing.

The more playwright Brandli sticks to the heightened reality of America transitioning from the Eisenhower 1950s to the Kennedy-era early ‘60s, the better her play works.

Unfortunately, only those well versed in Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles will readily pick up on the parallels between BLISS’s protagonists and their B.C. predecessors. (A small-print summary hidden at the end of the program helps, but only if it gets read, and even then, only the most knowledgeable Greek scholars will appreciate what Brandli has set out to accomplish.)

Lastly, in these days when an intermissionless ninety minutes has become the theatrical norm, there has to be a good reason for a play to be a two-acter. Such was the case with Brandli’s brilliant Through The Eye Of A Needle, and even it clocked in at well under two hours. BLISS, on the other hand, goes on a good half hour too long.

 Noble’s, Misaye’s, Gordon’s, St. Clair’s, and Carter’s spot-on performances (the latter delivering two night-and-day different ones) are the best reason to catch BLISS.

Second best is its deliciously stylized production design, from Amanda Knehans’ gauze-curtained, three-rooms-and-a-bus-stop set to Allison Dillard’s colorful, nostalgic 1950s frocks to Ebony Madry’s striking lighting to Gabrieal Griego’s era-establishing sound design to Jacqueline Hartenfels and Gion DeFrancesco’s nifty 1950s props  … and a golden harp for Apollo to strum.

 BLISS (or Emily Post is Dead!), a Moving Arts Joint World Premiere, is produced by Cece Tio. Chuma Gault is assistant director. Amanda Garcia is stage manager and Courtney Rhodes and Kirsten Turkle are assistant stage managers. Jenny Henderson and Emma Shibley are dramturgs. Casting is by Raul Clayton Staggs.

Having loved Jami Brandli’s Through The Eye Of A Needle so much that I went back for a second holiday-season visit, I found BLISS (or Emily Post is Dead!) more than a bit of a letdown. At the very least it scores points for ambition, and for those who can tell Clytemnestra from Cleopatra or Medea from Madea, it just might just do the trick.

Moving Arts at Atwater Village Theatre, Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Los Angeles.
www.movingarts.org

–Steven Stanley
November 12, 2018
Photos: Mae Koo Photography, also Chuma Gault and Allison Dillard

Tags: Atwater Village Theatre, Jami Brandlii, Los Angeles Theater Review, Moving Arts