BRIGHT HALF LIFE


An interracial same-sex couple embark upon a four-decade-long roller-coaster ride of romantic highs and lows in the Road Theatre Company’s Los Angeles Premiere of Tanya Barfield’s Bright Half Life, as funny and sad and moving a two-character dramedy as I’ve seen in ages.

Zigzagging back and forth (and back and forth and back and forth) in time may seem an overly ambitious way to tell a story that could just as easily unfold in chronological order, but wonder of wonders it works, thanks to a combination of intricately constructed writing, Amy Harmon’s inspired direction, and two bona fide star turns.

The couple in question could hardly come from more dissimilar backgrounds or have more divergent viewpoints.

Boyishly butch Erica (Tiffany Wolff) wears her sexual orientation as a badge of pride. Conservatively dressed Vicky (Kacie Rogers), on the other hand, is only just coming into her sexuality, a transition complicated by old-school African-American parents for whom Erica can’t possibly be more than their daughter’s Caucasian roommate.

Bright Half Life’s non-linear approach takes us in rapid succession from Erica and Vicky’s first attempt at skydiving to a marriage proposal to a family health crisis to an acrimonious breakup to the couple’s first date, and that’s only in the play’s opening five or ten minutes.

And though these non-stop time jumps might seem to portend considerable audience confusion, they add up instead to a cohesive lifetime of events both big and small.

It does help a good deal that episodes occurring further on in the couple’s relationship don’t get their first mention until later on in the play.

And like Harold Pinter’s Betrayal and Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years, both of which are told in reverse chronology, later moments in Erica and Vicky’s lives only serve to make their meet-cute, their first dates, and their decision to spend their lives together that much more poignant in retrospect.

All of this adds up to a decades-long relationship saga told in a brisk 80 or so minutes, and a production whose two incandescent stars never miss a beat despite some nearly impossible script demands.

Rogers and Wolff defy easy “butch-femme” stereotyping, each of them developing a richly textured, multi-faceted character and together displaying enough opposites-attract romantic/sexual chemistry to keep an audience invested in their relationship, even when the road gets decidedly rocky.

Following the playwright’s instructions that Bright Half Life be staged with “little or no set, no props, no projections,” scenic designer Brian Graves and costume designer Mary Jane Miller keep things stylishly simple, and Nicholas Santiago limits his projections to pre-curtain images and a few very subtle effects.

The design stars this time round are Derrick McDaniel and Marc Antonio Pritchett, whose contributions (lighting and sound respectively) make it instantly clear whenever a time change takes place, McDaniel with a different color scheme for each moment in Erica and Vicky’s lives, and Pritchett with dozens of time-travel whooshes.

Bright Half Life is produced by Danna Hyams and Ray Paolantonio. Gloria Ines is assistant director. Kate Huffman and Krishna Smitha are understudies. Maurie Gonzalez is stage manager. Darryl Johnson is technical director. David Elzer is publicist.

Last year’s pandemic protocols had the Road presenting its fully staged production of Harrison David Rivers’ same-sex interracial two-hander This Bitter Earth on video for home audiences, which makes Bright Half Life’s arrival in April of 2022 all the more noteworthy.

With lesbians getting the spotlight this time round, and with Kacie Rogers and Tiffany Wolff performing before a living, breathing audience, lucky indeed are audiences who get to see Bright Half Life come vividly and movingly to life on the Road Theatre stage.

The Road Theatre, NoHo Senior Arts Colony, 10747 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood.
www.RoadTheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
April 8, 2022
Photos: Elizabeth Kimball

 

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