A father at the end of his rope seeks help for his delinquent teenage son from a woman he hasn’t seen in twenty-five years in Wendy Graf’s compelling, cathartic family drama Exit Wounds, now getting an absorbing World Premiere at Long Beach’s International City Theatre.

It’s been a quarter century since the woman in question, Linda Sadoski (Suanne Spoke), last laid eyes on her 40ish son Matt Kelly (Michael Polak), decades during which Matt has married, fathered two children now in their teens, and done everything in his power to forget the reasons behind his and his now deceased father’s exit from Linda’s life, decades during which his estranged mother has lived increasingly under the radar, i.e, no phone, no email, no anything that would mean contact with another living soul.

Until today, that is, when who should arrive at her door but Matt, bearing news that his seventeen-year-old loner of a son has been descending deeper and deeper into drugs, alcohol, violent video games, and guns, all of the above culminating in a set of school vandalism charges that Matt’s lawyer hopes to plead down to community service.

And so Matt has come begging for help from the one person who just might provide some answers, someone who can recognize from personal experience the warning signs of a life in jeopardy, and hopefully prevent history from repeating itself.

It takes considerably pleading (and a reminder that Matt’s mother once told her son that if you save one person, you save the world) for Linda to accede to his request and welcome grandson Danny (Hayden Kharrazi) into her hoarder’s mess of a home, if not her wounded, sealed-off heart.

(I should add that Danny’s been told nothing about Linda except that he’ll be doing live-in community service by helping a hoarder determine which of her accumulated detritus should be saved, which should be donated, and which should simply be thrown in the trash heap.)

Playwright Graf takes her deliberate time in revealing the devastating reasons behind Linda’s and Matt’s estrangement, time during which Danny’s hostility at being forced to live with a complete stranger somewhat predictably but no less gratifyingly transforms into something other than anger and resentment.

Exit Wounds may not be the first play to deal with what it deals with (forgive me for being cagey about what this is) but it may well be the first to deal with it from Linda’s particular point of view, just one reason Graf’s latest packs such an emotional punch.

Another is the trio of absolutely superb performances that director caryn desai has elicited on the ICT stage.

Spoke delivers a compelling star turn as a woman dealing with decades of guilt, grief, loneliness, and self-recrimination, a woman whose closed off heart and soul might still be redeemed.

Newcomer Kharrazi matches her every step of the way in an achingly real portrayal of an adolescent who may or may not carry a bad seed within him.

Last but not least, a terrific Polak reveals both a son’s anger at being forced to pay for someone else’s sins and a father’s fears that what happened once just might happen again.

Practical reasons may have prevented scenic designer Yuri Okahana-Benson from doing an inveterate hoarder’s jam-packed-with-junk complete claustrophobic justice, but there’s clutter enough for us to get the idea, and Donna Ruzika’s expert lighting design adds to Exit Wound’s impact.

Add to this Dave Mickey’s subtly emotion-enhancing musical underscoring, properties designers Patty and Gordon Briles’ piles of accumulated junk, and Kimberly DeShazo’s character-perfect costumes and you’ve got another topnotch ICT production design, completed by resident hair and wig designer Anthony Gagliardi.

desai does double duty as both producer and director. Letitia Chang is production stage manager and Sarai Sarmiento is assistant stage manager. Casting is by Michael Donovan, CSA and Richie Ferris, CSA. Lucy Pollak is publicist.

Plays like Closely Related Keys, Please Don’t Ask About Becket, All-American Girl, No Word In Guyanese For Me, and Behind The Gates have revealed a playwright’s gifts for putting a personal face on such hot-button topics as terrorism, racism, homophobia, and questions of nature vs. nurture.

It is high praise indeed to say that Exit Wounds is one of Wendy Graf’s very best.

International City Theatre, Long Beach Performing Arts Center, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach.
www.InternationalCityTheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
August 25, 2023
Photos: Kayte Deimoa

Tags: International City Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review, Wendy Graf