Tony-nominated playwright Nicky Silver goes Chekhovian without abandoning his gift for snappy one-liners in Too Much Sun, a West Coast Premiere that manages to transition from comedy to something befitting the Greeks without missing a beat.

It’s actually in Greek tragedy mode that we first meet regional stage diva Audrey Langham (Diane Cary) mid-meltdown and about to walk out on the title role of Medea on the day before its Chicago opening no less.

We’re then off to Cape Cod where Audrey’s 30something schoolteacher daughter Kitty (Autumn Reeser) and Kitty’s ad exec husband Dennis (Bryan Langlitz) are spending the summer, the former escaping from students who mumble and swear and say nasty things and the latter to work on the sci-fi novel he’s been writing all year in his head.

Meanwhile next door, 20ish Lucas (Bailey Edwards) is taking advantage of his and his widowed father Winston’s (Clint Jordan) year-round digs to deal pot to the Cape’s summer vacationers, a business likely to provoke nothing more than a nod and smile from Dad were he to find out about it, his way of saying he’s fine with Lucas being gay.

As for Audrey, her first visit in two-and-a-half years has the aging theater star camped out in her son-in-law’s office, leaving poor Dennis without a conducive writing environment for who knows how long, her agent frustrated as hell that his client won’t answer his couple hundred calls, and Lucas’s handsome, successful, but rather dull father considering putting a wedding ring on Audrey’s finger, a potential godsend for the now stone-cold-broke five-time divorcee.

And just when the Odyssey Theatre stage is already peopled with enough angst-plagued lead characters to do Chekhov proud, who should show up on a mission to “get her ass back to Chicago” but Audrey’s agent’s nephew/assistant Gil (Joe Gillette), who soon reveals that what he’d much rather be doing is studying to be a rabbi.

As far back as his 1993 absurdist AIDS-era tragicomic farce Pterodactyls and again more recently in 2011’s Arthur Miller-esque dark comedy The Lyons, playwright Silver has demonstrated a knack for tackling the serious with comedic flair, and 2014’s Too Much Sun is one of his best.

Outrageous as Silver’s characters may be (Audrey could easily give Joan Crawford a run for her passive-aggressive Mommie Dearest money) and as laugh-getting as the wittiest among them prove to be (Gil describes his agent uncle as “Goebbels minus the warmth”), they are sufficiently rooted in truth that when painful reality rears its ugly head, the switch from laughter to heartbreak is seamless.

Bart DeLorenzo directs a terrific ensemble with his accustomed flair beginning with a well-cast Cary as the latest in a string of memorable Nicky Silver moms, the kind of woman who can entertain guests with a tale of her daughter’s most humiliating childhood moment, then turn it into a story of how she met her third husband.

Captivating Hallmark Channel romcom star Reeser transitions effortlessly to the legitimate stage as the baggage-carrying Kitty, Langlitz and Jordan provide solid support as the men in Kitty’s and Audrey’s lives, and Gillette is a bearded charmer as Gil.

 Best of all is Edwards’s waiflike and winning Lucas, heartbreakingly vulnerable and achingly real when love arrives from the most unlikely of sources, then devastates.

Scenic designer Alex M. Calle surrounds Dennis and Kitty’s picture-perfect Cape Cod summer home with sand dunes and sun-kissed blue sky, vibrantly lit by Rose Malone as are Michael Mullen’s character-revealing outfits and Michael O’Hara’s nifty props, while sound designer Christopher Moscatiello underscores with ambience-establishing surf, summer breezes, and jazzy instrumentals.

Too Much Sun is produced by Andrew Carlberg. George Barbakadze is assistant director. Michelle Hanzelova is stage manager. Francesca Nicolas is associate scenic designer. Casting is by Kendra Clark and Helen Geier. Tatum Langton and Greg Nussen are understudies.

Too Much Sun may take its time in revealing what a truly fine play it is, but once it does, it’s clear Nicky Silver has come up with another darkly comedic winner. The same can be said for its Odyssey Theatre guest production West Coast Premiere.

Odyssey Theatre, 2055 South Sepulveda Boulevard, Los Angeles.
www.odysseytheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
March 28, 2019
Photos: Jeff Lorch

Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Nicky Silver, Odyssey Theatre