An on-fire Amye Partain is a definite find, but an off-putting male protagonist, an overly tangled time frame, and an approach that takes meta to the extreme do neither the play’s leading lady nor the audience any favors in Sam Henry Kass’s Brooklyn’s Way, a Theatre 68 World Premiere.

Jonathan R, Freeman shares the stage with Partain as veteran TV writer Scoot, 20 years Brooklyn’s senior, who starts things off by breaking the fourth wall to inform us that, “Okay, just for clarity’s sake, I’m playing the role of the person who will ultimately write the play within the play, although in theory you and I, as these two characters cannot possibly know yet, what that play will entail, because these two characters are reuniting for the first time, after many years apart.”

Clearly Scoot’s definition of “clarity” (sorry, make that the definition of the actor playing the man who will write the play within the play) and mine could hardly be more dissimilar, and things are only starting to get meta and muddled.

We then flash back twenty years to Scoot and Brooklyn’s meet-cute in the parking lot of Hollywood’s Radford Studio, where Sam has been hired to co-write a presumably popular TV series and Brooklyn has been brought on board as his assistant.

Unfortunately for the studio, Scoot seems far more interested in writing his own scripts (hunting and pecking the keyboard of his antique Smith-Corona) than in doing what he’s being paid quite handsomely to do.

He’s also prone to launching into densely written soliloquies (“I would think that someone as multi-faceted, as layered, as spectacularly complex as you, would have multiple levels of honesty, that tip toe into soul baring, swan dive into the depths of double talk, while hang gliding across and through clouds filled with moments of truthful despair, that are perhaps so complicatedly painful, that for even the slightest moment, you might dance with an image of being slightly less than forthright, before coming to the ultimate realization, that your eyes can’t lie. Your beauty is a burden to the extent, that you are incapable of feigning the truth, especially when it comes to matters of the heart.”

Brooklyn may find herself smitten. This reviewer not so much, and since I didn’t buy into whatever on earth attracted Brooklyn to Scoot, I felt disengaged from the play (or the play within the play, or the play within the play within the play, I’m still not sure how many “withins” there were).

On the plus side, Brooklyn’s Way clocks in at just under seventy minutes. On the minus side, its downer of an abrupt ending seems unlikely to leave an audience with anything approaching a smile on their faces.

Brooklyn’s Way’s greatest asset is by far its leading lady, who’s got the same kind of electrifying edge that won Jennifer Lawrence an Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook.

Freeman gives Scoot his all under Ronnie Marmo’s direction, but the character is so unappealing, and the volume of Freeman’s voice so ear-splitting, that I found myself disengaging almost from the start.

Scenic design, per Scoot’s specifications (“You want a play with elaborate sets and costumes, but with dialogue that will make you want to decapitate yourself, go down to La Jolla.”) is about as minimalist as a “scenic design” can get, and though Matt Richter’s lighting is his accomplished best, it can’t help but overpower his otherwise terrific scene-setting upstage projections.

Taylor Abbay is stage manager. Lisa Zambetti is casting director. Sandra Kuker-Franco is publicist,

I wanted to like Brooklyn’s Way, but it didn’t take long for a little of Scoot and Sam Henry Kass’s too convoluted script to go a long, long way. Even a sensational Amye Partain can’t overcome Brooklyn’s Way’s multiple minuses.

Theatre 68, 5112 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood.
www.theatre68.com

–Steven Stanley
September 20, 2024
Photos: Ashley Randall Photography

Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Sam Henry Kass, Theatre 68