BRUSHSTROKE


There’s nothing quite like a book, movie, TV show or play that has audiences gasping “I did not see that coming.” Case in point: John Ross Bowie’s World Premiere wow of a comedy thriller, Brushstroke, now getting a world-class World Premiere at the Odyssey.

Not that there’s anything in its ingeniously concocted setup to suggest what lies ahead, just one of many reasons to celebrate Brushstroke’s arrival on the West Side.

The year is 1956, the Red Scare has the FBI and the CIA hunting communists around every corner both here and abroad, and if you’re a writer or a poet or a painter, Greenwich Village is the place to be.

Take for example abstract artist Ted Berkow (James Urbaniak), whose latest gallery showing has 30ish Yale grad Marvin Kovacs (Malcolm Barrett) gushing over the painter’s latest creation, a humongous cubist canvas featuring (in Marvin’s words) “a set of clearly defined shapes, almost a sort of architecture” in shades of green and blue.

Indeed, so taken by Ted’s painting is Marvin that he immediately forks over more than enough cash to purchase it there and then, upon which Ted shrewdly ad libs that “it’s part of a series” before inviting Marvin over to his East Village flat to check out (and presumably buy) more of his canvases.

It’s there that Marvin meets Ted’s much younger (and very fetching) sister Susan (Evangeline Edwards), whom he entertains with an amusing art gallery anecdote before forking over more than enough cash to pay the siblings’ long overdue phone bill, and before the twosome can finish sharing Susan’s proffered joint, Marvin finds himself smitten by both her beauty and her smarts.

So far so entertaining, and with Barrett delivering what is sure to be remembered as one of the year’s most irresistible star turns as the gushingly, gleefully, irrepressibly upbeat Marvin, Brushstroke had me from hello.

And then…

To reveal any more of what playwright Bowie has up his sleeve would be a crime, so I’ll refrain from giving anything else away and leave it to you to discover Brushstroke’s many unexpected twists among its countless laughs, the greater part of them elicited by Barrett, whose Marvin has much of the same wide-eyed innocence, good nature, and gee-whiz charm that made Sam Richardson’s Richard Splett a fan favorite on HBO’s Veep. (Perhaps not surprisingly, Marvin’s favorite four-letter word is “Gosh!”)

All of this makes the always memorable Urbaniak’s acerbic, irascibly antisocial Ted the ideal scene partner for Barrett’s sweet-natured, mild-mannered, utterly adorable Marvin.

Under Casey Stangl’s razor-sharp direction, the ravishing Edwards proves herself every bit as adept at light-hearted comedy here as she was at revealing dramatic chops in Rogue Machine’s Heroes Of The Fourth Turning.

Last but not least, the tall, dark, and movie star handsome Brendan Hines completes the pitch-prefect cast in a role I’ll simply call “Man on Park Bench.”

Producer Jeremy Wein has assembled a top-of-the-line design team to give Brushstroke’s World Premiere the classiest of professional sheens beginning with Keith Mitchell’s realistically clutter-filled artist’s studio (kudos shared with props designer/scenic painter Joyce Hutter), stunningly lit with particular attention to color and detail by Soran Schwartz and Hayden Kirschbaum. (That it’s more than just an artist’s studio is yet another of Brushstroke’s surprises.)

Christine Cover Ferro’s costumes not only evoke the mid-1950 to perfection but tell us much (but deliberately not all) about the characters wearing them, and Marc Antonio Pritchett’s jazz-infused sound design is another production design winner.

Casting is by Nicole Arbusto. Elinor Gunn and Randy Thompson are understudies.

Brad Bentz is technical director. Leslie Secrist is stage manager and Andrew Blahak is assistant stage manager. David Elzer is publicist.

 John Ross Bowie may be best known to TV audiences as The Big Bang Theory’s speech-defective Barry Kripke, but his stage appearances (including this past year’s Life Sucks) have made him an L.A. stage favorite as well.

That Bowie is also a writer to be reckoned with is made abundantly clear on the Odyssey Theatre stage.

Described in press materials as “based on a story so crazy it has to be (a little bit) true,” John Ross Bowie’s Brushstroke is one unforgettable humdinger of a play.

Odyssey Theatre, 2055 South Sepulveda Boulevard, Los Angeles.
www.OdysseyTheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
January 27, 2024
Photos: Zoe Tiller

 

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