THE ALTRUISTS

A talented bunch of recent AAMDA grads have joined creative forces at this year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival to bring audiences The Altruists, Nicky Silver’s outrageously funny skewering of liberal causes gone berserk.

Chief among the titular do-gooders is Ronald (Jake Marshall), who having grown up in wealth now finds it his life’s work to do unto others, whether that means protesting school, welfare, and AIDS cutbacks, or fighting for gay rights, or supporting Women Against Drunk Drivers.

On this particular Sunday morning, however, the first thing on Ronald’s mind is Lance (Rodolfo Ornelas), the sexy one-night-stand he’s woken up next to (and fallen head over heels over) only to be informed that the tousle-haired twink expects to be paid for services rendered.

Meanwhile, Adam’s soap star sister Sydney (Juliet Kennedy) has a man in her own bed, an unseen figure whose walkathons and demonstrations and firebombs and letter-writing (and cheating ways) she’s had more than enough of, which is why Sydney ends her extended rant by pulling out a gun and shooting her lover’s sheet-covered body … three times.

Unbeknownst to daytime TV’s Montana Beach, however, a very much alive Ethan (Barrett Levy) has just spent the night with his lesbian chum Cybil (Mia Aubuchon), who following her own anti-establishment tirade (“Fuck the mayor! Fuck City Hall! Fuck the cops! Fuck the yuppie scum with their French restaurants and real estate prices and Baby Gap and Starbucks!”) is off to yet another protest rally, Ethan by her side.

Will Ronald persuade Lance to give up his life as a sex worker for marital bliss—with a baby, or a dog, or at least a cactus to care for? Will Sydney manage to cajole Ronald, Ethan, or Lance into getting rid of the body in her bed? And just who the blazes is it lying dead under Sydney’s designer sheets?

These are just three of the questions playwright Silver poses, to audience delight, over the course of The Altruist’s frenetically fast-paced hour and a half of absurdist fun.

Director Audrey Valcourt keeps her fellow AMDA Los Angeles grads on the same over-the-top page, Kennedy and Marshall in particular delivering star turns blazing with wild abandonment and unabashed glee.

Aubuchon’s ditzy Cybil and Levy’s macho Ethan are terrific too, and Ornelas has his droll moments, though it’s hard to buy his Lance as having been born and raised anywhere near Montana.

Since Hollywood Fringe Festival rules require that the entire set be struck following each performance, production design is limited to what can be set up and removed in a matter of minutes, but the creative team behind The Altruists have done a fine job of creating three different, equally cluttered playing area and lighting each as the script requires.

Amanda Strauss’s costumes suit each character to a T, though one outfit begs the question, just when is Silver’s play, first staged in the year 2000, supposed to be taking place this time round? (Some retro cell phones and two landlines suggest sometime in the early 2000s, but Ethan sports a “FUCK Trump” t-shirt, so…?)

Valcourt and Aubuchon are producers and Kennedy is associate producer. Ami Babia is stage manager and Rory James Leech is intimacy coordinator. Kimberly Sanchez Garrido is board operator.

 Hollywood Fringe Festival attendees who’ve have their fill of solo performances and experimental new works would do well to give The Altruists a look-see. It’s been a proven laugh-getter for almost twenty-five years and even bareboned as can be, this time round is no exception.

The Actors Company Other Space Theater, 916 N. Formosa Ave, West Hollywood.
www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/10718

–Steven Stanley
June 8, 2024

 

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