Award-winning writer-director-actor-designer Stefan Marks is back, and wearing all four hats at once, with Ophelia, his latest blend of theatrical magic, whimsy, and profundity.

Marks stars as Ophelia’s not-quite-divorced protagonist, currently hard at work helping Mom (Deborah Geffner) empty her home of unneeded memorabilia before moving her into a memory care facility.

Not that Mom’s all that interested in deciding what to keep and what to burn, preferring instead to discuss her son’s future, specifically her desire for him to be “more proactive if we’re going to marry you off” following the failure of a marriage to someone who “doesn’t identify as a woman anymore.”

Mom may not adhere to current standards of political correctness (“When I was a kid we took the genitals we were given and we got on with our life.”) but you can’t say she’s not a feminist pioneer, having fought back against a baseball bat-wielding husband and gotten rid of him for good. (Make that a feminist pioneer and a murderess.)

As for Mom’s dream of becoming a grandmother while still in partial possession of her mind and her memories, well that wish just might be about to come true, that is assuming her son’s tea shop meet-cute with Her (Tatum Langton) bears fruit.

Will Son find happiness with Her? Will he give Mom a grandchild before the last of her memories fades away? Will he make effective use of the re-set button he’s found amongst his mother’s possessions?

And has lighting struck yet again for a writer-director-actor-designer whose previous one-word-titled hits (including Space and Middle8) scored rave after rave after rave?

The answers to the first three questions may be far from certain, but the answer to question number four is a resounding “Yes!”

Written and workshopped during the pandemic lockdown of 2020 and reflective of the “post-pandemic world” we live in (“I miss wearing a mask,” Son declares), Ophelia is Stefan Marks at his most imaginative and adventurous and cliché-defying. (Take Mom’s assertion that she had no choice but to kill her husband because “he was abusive. He was unhappy. I had to put him out of my misery,” or Son’s declaration to Her that “I get so caught up in what you’re saying that it wouldn’t even occur to me to muffle your words with a kiss.”)

Those who prefer more realistic, linear fare may find the frequently surreal Ophelia a bit too “out there” and enigmatic for their tastes, but for those willing to go there, Marks’ comedic three-hander offers much to savor, most significantly the star turns director Marks has elicited from himself and his two radiant costars.

Once more disproving the the often true notion that an outside director is needed for a World Premiere play, or that an actor should not direct himself, Marks not only treats audiences to the most entertaining and mind-blowing of comedies but delivers a quirky, engaging star turn that merits added snaps for a showstopper of a beat poetry slam.

Geffner dazzles as the most deliciously off-kilter of mothers (who really does say the darnedest things) and Langton is so captivating in dual roles that I found myself thinking, “Where has this actress been all my play-reviewing life?” (That Ophelia gives both women more than a few mesmerizing monologs is an added plus.)

Not only has Marks written, directed, and starred in Ophelia, he shares design credits with co-set designer Mark Svastics (lots of packing boxes holding multiple surprises) and co-sound designer Stephen Epstein (plenty of snappy effects throughout the show).

Svastics’ lighting design too is a stunner (especially in the poetry slam sequence) and Paula Higgins’ costumes have been designed to fit each character’s personality quirks to a T.

Ophelia is produced by Null Set Productions. Bobby Pearsons is stage manger. Sandra Kuker is publicist. Amy Braddock understudies the role of Her.

It’s been over five years since Stefan Marks’ last label-defying original play, and if the pandemic was at least partially responsible for Ophelia’s delay, it’s also given L.A. theater’s answer to Orson Welles extra time to once again come up with something absorbing and magical and uniquely his own.

Odyssey Theatre, 2055 South Sepulveda Boulevard, Los Angeles.
www.stefanmarks.com/ophelia

–Steven Stanley
April 12, 2024
Photos: Baranduin Briggs

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Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Odyssey Theatre, Stefan Marks