Musings on art and beauty serve as an intellectual prelude to a provocative look at a marriage in crisis in Cory Hinkle’s The End Of Beauty, the latest Playwrights’ Arena World Premiere.

Life in Wichita no longer holds surprises for married-without-children art professors Michael (Silas Weir Mitchell) and Margaret (Tania Verafield), that is until Margaret’s former student, the “overblown, overhyped” young artist Sam Grayson (Ruy Iskandar) happens to run into his onetime prof at the local mall and gets himself invited over for dinner.

After years spent in the Big Apple and elsewhere in the art world, Sam’s memories of his college years have brought the hometown boy back to the place where Margaret first inspired him to paint.

Though newly single and intending to stay that way (or at least until he finds Ms. Right), the 30-year-old hunk ignites so many electric sparks in a woman married to an older, jaded, crotchety, fuddy-duddy that his search the perfect partner may well have ended before it even gets started.

Playwright Hinkle spends much of The End Of Beauty’s first act having his characters describe what beauty means to them.

For Michael, it can only be defined with an image like that of a monarch butterfly migration that gave a young boy a new way to see the world.

Margaret recalls the first time she saw Jackson Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm Number 30 at the Met, “chaos and chance framed by order,” and thought to herself that maybe that’s what beauty is.

Sam, on the other hand, finds that illusive quality in “the one thing that’s different,” the “unorthodox twist that sticks with you and changes everything” so that “everything else fades into the background.”

As for what might provoke beauty to end, well for that you’ll have to stick around post-intermission for the most unexpected of second acts, one that takes Act One’s two-day time frame and expands it to epic proportions.

Suffice it to say that if Act One has already proven compelling thanks in large part to the electricity generated by three particularly fine performances, The End Of Beauty’s second act adds poignancy and regret to an already heady mix.

Director Barbara Kallir elicits riveting work from all concerned, beginning with Mitchell’s Michael, whose passive-aggressive frustration at an unfulfilling, unfulfilled life are just one reason his nubile younger wife might want to stray, though it’s not until later scenes that star of TV’s Grimm gets to dig deep into years perhaps not so well lived and Mitchell simply devastates.

On a roll since her revelatory performance as the foul-mouthed, hard-as-nails Lizzie Lightning in For The Love Of (Or, The Roller Derby Play), Verafield is just as powerful as a happy/unhappy wife whose life choices provoke deeply moving consequences and an end-of-play transformation that is simply stunning.

Last but not least, Iskandar follows a string of New York credits with a dynamic, charismatic Playwrights’ Arena debut as a young artist whose talent is but one reason he’s made the cover of a major glossy art mag as the art world’s hottest new thing.

Scenic designer Austin Kottkamp gives Michael and Margaret some stylishly retro suburban Wichita digs including just-right artwork on the walls.

Mylette Nora once again costumes a Playwrights’ Arena production with a series of character-perfect outfits, Matt Richter lights sets and costumes so as to achieve maximum dramatic effect, and sound designer Austin Quan underscores the action with appropriate edge along with jazz on vinyl.

The End Of Beauty is produced by Henry “Heno” Fernandez. Thien “Tintin” Nguyen is stage manager. Casting is by Raul Clayton Staggs.

Following last month’s highly entertaining generation-gap/culture-clash dramedy Southernmost, The End Of Beauty makes it two remarkably different winners in a row for Playwrights’ Arena, both productions more than fulfilling the company’s goal of discovering, nurturing and producing bold new works for the stage written exclusively by Los Angeles playwrights.

Playwrights’ Arena @ Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater Village.
www.playrightsarena.org

–Steven Stanley
June 3, 2019
Photos: Playwrights’ Arena

Tags: Cory Hinkle, Los Angeles Theater Review, Playwrights' Arena