CELESTIAL EVENTS


Nineteen IAMA Theatre Company members (five writers, two directors, and twelve actors) have joined creative forces to celebrate IAMA’s return to live-and-in-person productions with Celestial Events, an engaging, entertaining World Premiere takeoff on such star-studded Hollywood fare as Valentine’s Day and Crazy, Stupid, Love.

You know the genre. A dozen or more seemingly unrelated characters end up sharing unexpected connections over the course of a single day or night.

And just as it worked for Hollywood A-listers like Bradley Cooper, Ryan Gosling, Julia Roberts, and Emma Stone, it works just as winningly for Alex Alcheh, Ryan W. Garcia, Tina Huang, Bailey Humiston, Andria Kozica, Melissa Jane Osborne, Kacie Rogers, Adriana Santos, Sonal Shah, Lexi Sloan, Margaux Susi and Jamie Wollrab in a West Hollywood black box.

Attentive theatergoers will have little trouble figuring out the ties that bind Celestial Events’ eclectic cast of characters, but in case you want a bit of a head start, this may help.

There’s an astronomy professor Ralph (Wollrab), whose girlfriend Kate (Osborne) has just cancelled their date in order to help her friend Eric (Garcia) propose to kindergarten teacher Meena (Shah) under meteor shower-lit skies.

Before any of this can happen, though, Eric needs to exit the elevator in which he finds himself stuck with skater girl Dani (Humiston), who just happens to know his soon-to-be fiancée as “Ms. Meena, from MapleTree Learning Center.”

Then there’s Lena and Lenny (Sloan and Alcheh), young marrieds with an as yet unnamed baby, who’ve left said infant in the care of a friend, the better to relive their younger days dressed up as goths under skies lit bright by a media-dubbed “Star Fall.”

Lenny’s sister Ilana (Susi) and her wife Ariel (Kozica) have big plans for the evening too, i.e., a “cool divorce” after five years of marriage, an event they plan on celebrating … guess where.

Josie (Huang), “Dr. Menzeez” of TV’s Legal Med (“If it’s not bleeding, sign the papers!”) and her sister Gina (Santos) have come together tonight to scatter a certain Jean Michel’s ashes per their late mother’s request. (Kate and Meena just happen to be among “Dr. Meneez’s” biggest fans.)

And last but not least, there’s Joy (Rogers), a former student of Ralph’s, who would like nothing better than for her favorite astronomy prof to read (and maybe even write the introduction to) the book’s she’s just finished writing, that is if she can convince him that its subject matter, Astrology, isn’t the “parlor trick” he considers it to be but instead the “answer to what has been missing” from all the work Joy has read through the years about our universe.

It won’t take a rocket scientist (or even an amateur astrologer like Joy) long to predict that all twelve of the above characters (one for each sign of the Zodiac, in case you hadn’t noticed) will soon find themselves gathered on “Mount Elysia” for the much-touted Star Fall, but as in the Hollywood flicks mentioned earlier in this review, it’s the getting there that’s all the fun.

With a script penned by co-writing captains Deborah S. Craig and Christian Durso in collaboration with Anna Rose Hopkins, John Lavelle and Santos, and directorial duties shared by Tom Amandes and Adrian Gonzalez, Celestial Events is precisely the group project/company reunion that IAMA members have been longing for these past twenty-four months, and a chance for L.A. audience to celebrate IAMA’s return.

Blessed by sharp writing, well-developed characters, and all-around terrific performances, Celestial Events is most definitely not a case of “too many cooks” spoiling the broth.

Justin Huen’s set (mostly made up of movable scaffolding and an audience’s imagination) permits quick. efficent scene changes, and Briana Patillo’s lighting, Ivan Robles’ sound design, and Manee Leija’s costumes are all topnotch for a production running a brief two weekends.

Celestial Events is produced by Terry Li and Geoffrey Rivas. Josh Epstein is production manager. Jessica Moneà Evans was rehearsal stage manager. Savanha Moore is performance stage manager and Chloe Madriaga is assistant stage manager. Lucy Pollak of Lucy Pollak PR is publicist.

If Hollywood should get its hands on Celestial Events, it could well make for a star-studded multi-million dollar smash.

Even without Julia or Ryan or Bradley or Emma’s names attached (and produced at the teeniest fraction of what that blockbuster would cost), Celestial Events proves an IAMA Theatre Company event worth celebrating.

The Actors Company, 916a. N. Formosa Ave, West Hollywood.
www.iamatheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
March 6, 2022
Photos: Jeff Lorch

 

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