DURANG!

Christopher Durang reveals his trademark outlandishness times four at Studio/Stage this month in Mmmkay Productions and Crown City Theatre Company’s Durang!, a quartet wild and crazy Hollywood Fringe Festival one-acts, directed with pizzazz by Kristin Towers-Rowles.

Audience members unfamiliar with Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie will still find plenty to laugh about in For Whom The Southern Belle Tolls, but those who’ve previously made the acquaintance of Amanda, Tom, and Laura Wingfield and Laura’s Gentleman Caller will get a special kick out of seeing Mullen in drag as Amanda Wingvalley and a delightfully quirky Dan Lovato as her pathologically shy son Lawrence, whose physical ailments include a limp, asthma, and eczema, to name just a few.

He’s also got a collection of glass swizzle sticks (“This one is called String Bean because it’s long and thin.”) which his mother begs him not to show off to the hard-of-hearing Feminine Caller (Michelle Bonebright-Carter) his brother Tom (Michael J. Marchak) has brought home from work before heading of to pick up yet another sexy sailor at the movies.

Mullen makes for the most deliciously overbearing of Southern matriarchs, and his three costars generate abundant laughter as well.

Things get downright bizarre in ‘Dentity Crisis, with a marvelously manic Mouchette Van Helsdingen’s Edith Fromage and the multi-accented Will Potter as her son Robert, who keeps shape-shifting from his sister Jane’s (the lovely Megan Cochrane) brother to her father to her grandfather to her mother’s French lover, and back.

I’m not quite sure what all this means (Marchak’s Mr. Summers shows up as Peter Pan and Shayna Gabrielle as a character known only as Woman), but ‘Dentity Crisis is nothing if not watchable, and the cast give it their over-the-top all.

Wanda’s Visit is up next, with Mullen once again bending genders to hilarious effect, this time as a big-haired, big-boned redhead who’s nursed a longtime crush on her still handsome, still hunky high school sweetheart Jim (Neill Unger)

When the bold and brassy Wanda shows up intending to make up for lost time, Jim’s wife Marsha (Jen Talton) fades by comparison to a woman who’s not above planting herself smack dab in the middle of the heretofore happily married couple, even when they’re snug in bed.

Lovato’s Waiter and Chris Ramirez and Potter’s Mafia Men complete the topnotch cast in this offbeat take on “The Guest That Wouldn’t Leave.”

One-act number three has James Everts’ George Spelvin living “The Actor’s Nightmare” of not only having neglected to learn his lines before Opening Night, he doesn’t even know what play he’s stepping into.

Make that plays, since George’s costars (Gabrielle as Sarah Siddons, Cochrane as Ellen Terry, and Ramirez doubling as Henry Irving and Executioner) keep changing costumes and roles in what might be a Noel Coward comedy, a Shakespearean tragedy, or Robert Bolt’s A Man For All Seasons, and it’s up to stage manager Meg (Bonebright-Carter) to do what she can to help.

Everts is particularly appealing as a leading man doing his best not to fall on his face in this entertainingly performed surreal farce.

If he didn’t already steal the show in a matched pair of madcap female roles, Mullen earns sky-bonus points for his absolutely fabulous costume designs, a major plus in a Fringe production where sets (ingeniously designed by Mullen and Potter), props (by Mullen again, with weapons provided by Patrick Stayer), lighting (by Greg Crafts), and sound design (by Ryan Rowles and rehearsal stage manager Ryan Rowles Jr.) must be kept deliberately simple for easy entry and exit from the theater.

Hannah Cairo is production stage manager. Ken Werther is publicist.

After a pandemic pause that’s now lasted close to a year and a half, vaxxed* and masked theatergoers will find much to relish in Durang!, a welcome return to live theater for Angelinos in need of a laughter-filled lift.

*Audience members are required to wear a mask indoors in compliance with the current LA County mandate. In addition to wearing a mask, you will need to present proof of vaccination against COVID-19 or a negative COVID-19 test (within 72 hours) along with a photo ID.

Studio/Stage, 520 N. Western Ave, Los Angeles.
https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/7168

–Steven Stanley
August 10, 2021
Photos: Jennifer Bendik

 

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