THE DREAMER EXAMINES HIS PILLOW

Two very good lead performances are the best reasons to check out Girl Trip Productions’ take on John Patrick Shanley’s The Dreamer Examines His Pillow at the Broadwater Black Box despite a weak third link and the dubious addition of a pair of female “fauns” not in Shanley’s script.

Not that the wordy, surreal three-hander is all that audience-friendly even under the best of circumstances, and those expecting something as accessible as Shanley’s romcom gen Moonstruck or the stage-to-screen stunner Doubt would do well to adjust their expectations.

The play’s initial setup promises dramatic sparks between a couple of on-again, off-again young lovers, wannabe painter Tommy (Fernando Siqueira) and painter’s daughter Donna (Lucy Rose Morgan), the latter of whom has recently discovered that her sleezeball boyfriend has been two-timing her with none other than her sixteen-year-old sister Mona.

And sparks there might well be, even factoring in frequent flights of linguistic fancy that some may find poetic and others simply obtuse.

Unfortunately, leading lady Morgan, who’s got the sensuality and acting chops to make Donna take fire paired with the right leading man (someone with the raw sexuality of a young Marlon Brando), isn’t given much to work with opposite Siqueira’s svelte, boyish, overly understated Tommy.

On the plus side, the 20something Brazilian transplant’s American accent does approximate a native speaker’s (and he deserves major snaps for memorizing a gazillion lines in a foreign tongue), but the cocky, street-smart, grammatically challenged Tommy (“I’m not doin’ nothing.” “There ain’t no athletes in foxholes.”) is written to be played straight outta Brooklyn or Philly, something few if any second-language learners can believably replicate. (The dreamily handsome Siqueira would be perfect for Romeo, though.)

Who would be right for the role of Donna’s lover were he closer to Tommy’s twenty-seven years is the charismatic Tom Degnan, aged up to play her 50something father, a macho, heavy-drinking, oft-philandering former painter whom Donna asks to have a heart-to-heart with her unfaithful boyfriend only to realize she’s been dating a too-close-for-comfort facsimile of dear, not-so-old Dad.

Perhaps not surprisingly, this second of Dreamer’s three scenes is the only one generating dramatic heat on the Broadwater Black Box stage, since the final head-to-head has Dad over at Tommy’s place with Donna nowhere to be seen until the play’s final, bizarrely surreal final minutes.

If director Harrison James had spent more time making sure that all three scenes be performed with the intensity they deserve and less on integrating performance art into a play that has done very well without it for almost four decades, this Dreamer Examines His Pillow might still hit the mark, but the decision to have leotard-wearing movement designer Sarah Polednak and Paige Amicon onstage throughout as a pair of fauns (as in “Doe, a deer, a female deer”) who accompany Shanley’s dialog with virtually nonstop “interpretive dance” is a curious one at best, and intrusive at worst.

Though Kenton Parker’s production design consists mostly of assorted pieces of furniture on an otherwise bare black box stage, composer/sound designer Crash Richard scores high marks for his mood-enhancing music (repeated pulsating drum beats in particular), Zo Haynes for the production’s equally effective lighting, and videographer Tyler Marie Evans for some striking live-action sequences projected during scene changes.

Meghan Nealon is stage manager.

Producers William Serri and Danny Polevy deserve major snaps for undertaking the multiple challenges posed when mounting an independent intimate theater production in L.A.

Had all three roles been appropriately cast, and were dance distractions not part of the mix, the efforts, energy, and financial investment they’ve put into The Dreamer Examines His Pillow might have achieved more satisfying results than those evident on the Broadwater Black Box stage.

The Broadwater Black Box, 6322 Santa Monica Blvd. Los Angeles.

–Steven Stanley
February 2, 2023
Photos: Nicholas Sanchez

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