Katie Forgette puts a 1970s blue-collar Irish-American Catholic comedic spin on the memory play in Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, the crowd-pleasing latest from Theatre 40.

Serving as our guide down memory lane in “a city very much like Seattle, or Boston, or Cincinnati, or …” is Linda O’Shea (Ivy Khan), who reminds us from the get-go that since “everybody remembers things differently and every time you remember something, it changes a little,” what we’re about to witness may in fact be “unrecognizable from what really happened.”

But no matter. Whether factual or a figment of Linda’s faulty memory, the four days about to go down in family history remain even now her “personal Watergate,” and like dominos, she tells us, “they just kept falling.”

A cast of colorful supporting characters play major roles in the events in question.

Linda’s quintessential 1970s homemaker mother Josephine (Allison Blanchard) cooks, shops, mops, vacuums, dusts, volunteers, prepares the family taxes, pays the bills, and provides 24-hour care for her invalid mother-in-law … or as her husband likes to put it, “has never worked a day in her life.”

Jo’s married feminist sister Theresa (Milda Dacys), aka Aunt Terri, has been going through a rough patch these days, one that “involves broken glass and a vacuum cleaner,” which is why she’s been staying at her sister’s till things cool off at home.

Jo’s younger daughter Becky (Danika Hughey), age 13, has recently started taking on the persona of Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe, that is when she’s not playing with  dolls or taping family conversations on a cassette recorder that will play a major part in the incident.

And last but most definitely not least, at least not in his own eyes, patriarch Michael James Flynn O’Shea (Patrick Skelton) is a Nixon-hating, family lore-recounting man whose default emotion is anger at things like Watergate, women, waste, or women who waste. (“One strip of toilet paper per trip to the ladies’ room. Two squares for a back-end job.”)

Domino One falls when Jo asks her older daughter to sit Becky down and “have the talk,” one that Mom is afraid would get her “all emotional” if she had to do it herself because she’s absolutely sure the 13-year-old “doesn’t know what’s coming.”

As for what Dominos Two, Three, Four, and Five turn out to be, far be it from this reviewer to spoil the surprises.

Suffice it to say that unexpected plot twists just keep on coming in a play whose nostalgic ‘70s setting is sure to evoke memories in older audience members while instructing those born in later decades what life was like in “a time of old school analog living,” more specifically in “a close knit hermetically sealed Catholic parish,” aka “the ultimate nightmare.”

Not only that, but since the entire cast of characters is in on the memory play conceit, Linda’s not the only one breaking the forth wall to opine on past events to deliciously contradictory effect.

Director Ann Hearn Tobolowsky elicits one terrific performance after another from a pitch-perfect cast, beginning with Khan’s wry, witty, instantly likeable, play-anchoring Linda.

Blanchard follows her memorable star turn in T40’s Good People with another blue collar gem, Dacys is a salty, opinionated delight as Terri, college student Hughey is astonishingly convincing as a precocious thirteen-year-old, and Skelton shows off versatility galore in a trio of roles, in particular one referred to in the program simply as “Heckenbach” for reasons I’ll leave it for you to discover.

Scenic designer Jeff G. Rack gives the O’Shea family home an authentically lived-in ‘70s look enhanced by Ernest McDaniel’s decade-appropriate props, and Michèle Young has designed an array of costumes in the 1970s awfulness that was polyester.

Completing yet another topnotch Theatre 40 production design are Derrick McDaniel’s once again expert lighting, Nick Foran’s once again highly effective sound design and Judi Lewin’s once again period-perfect wig, hair, and makeup.

Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help is produced by David Hunt Stafford. David Westbay is assistant director. Paul Reid is stage manager. Theresa O’Shea voices an offstage Grandmother O’Shea.

Since its 2019 debut, at least a half-dozen regional theaters have treated their audiences to Katie Forgette’s irresistible memory play. Theater 40 audiences can count themselves lucky to be the first in L.A. to experience Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help’s many delights.

Theatre 40, 241 S. Moreno Dr., Beverly Hills. T
www.Theatre40.org

–Steven Stanley
February 5, 2023
Photos: Michèle Young

Tags: Katie Forgette, Los Angeles Theater Review, Theatre 40