Thank you Nicky Silver! Pterodactyls Extended 2 weeks!

With Critics Pick by LA City Beat, Entertainment Today.net and Review Plays.com, we thought we would listen and ask for permission to extend the show. Nicky Silver has agreed:) We will be adding two more weeks! Hooray!

Fri, August 3; Sat, August 4

Fri, August 10; Sat, August 11

RSVP Now!
All shows @8pm

We are still at the Stella Adler Theatre, 6773 Hollywood Blvd. (NE corner of Highland)

Please come and check us out.

www.AthenaTheatre.com/ 818-754-1423

Veronique

Back Stage West-Pterodactyls

July 18, 2007
By Les Spindle
Nicky Silver's off-kilter tragicomedy is about an upper-crust family's dysfunctions of apocalyptic proportions; the script suggests that unless we find ways to adapt in an increasingly complex world, our species could go the way of the dinosaur. To spin his bizarre tale, the playwright has drawn from a cornucopia of sources -- a little Eugène Ionesco here, a touch of Joe Orton there, a flash of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, and, most strongly, echoes of Edward Albee's The American Dream. Yet, Silver isn't so much a dramaturgic larcenist as he is a shrewd craftsman who stirs up his pot with a lot of time-proven dramatic devices to create a highly original stew. Director Patrick Varon pulls off a generally fine rendition of this challenging piece.

Each member of this grotesque clan -- despite the Ozzie and Harriet façade -- has loose screws. Patriarch Arthur (Christopher Bradley) is prone to adultery and incest. His wife, Grace (Gillian Doyle), is a lush who worries more about social proprieties than about dealing with her children's personal crises. Daughter Emma (Veronique Ory) suffers from amnesia and panic attacks. Prodigal son Todd (Todd Kubrak) returns after years of separation, confessing that he's a sex addict afflicted with AIDS. The odd man out -- literally -- is Emma's sexually confused fiancé, Tommy (Ryan Baylor), the family servant, who wears a French maid's outfit and lusts after Todd.

Silver's self-absorbed characters talk at -- rather than with -- one another, leading to a lot of non sequiturs, driving home the point of a noncommunicative family. Varon could better modulate these exchanges, as they sometimes fly by too quickly for us to absorb needed information. The playwright's themes become clearer when the zany tone shifts to stark tragedy. The finest work comes from Doyle, whose basket-case matriarch feels like a cross between Katherine Helmond in Soap and Faye Dunaway's Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest. Kubrak excels as the loony artist turned amateur archaeologist, as does Ory as the seriocomic sad sack. Baylor is a hoot as the cross-dressing groom-to-be. Those with an appetite for nihilistic farce will enjoy this gleefully acidic satire.

Los Angeles City Beat-Pterodactyls

Theater Critic’s Choice: ‘Pterodactyls’

Nicky Silver was a fashionable young playwright in the ’90s. Two of his plays, including this one, quickly reached South Coast Repertory. But, strange to say, his work never reached Los Angeles County, at least not in reviewable form, until now, with Athena Theatre’s Pterodactyls. As an asymptomatic AIDS patient returns to his deeply denying and screwed-up Philadelphia family, a script that begins as a bitter farce ends as simply bitter – make that despairing. Silver’s targets now look familiar, and not all that funny, but director Patrick Varon’s actors hit them with precision. It’s good for L.A’s audiences to finally get to measure what the Silver rush of the ’90s was all about.
–Don Shirley

Entertainment Today.net and Reviewplays.com-Pterodactyls

For ReviewPlays.com and EntertainmentToday.net, 7/17/07

*** CRITIC’S PICK ***

TICKETHOLDERS
by Travis Michael Holder

Pterodactyls
Stella Adler Theatre

Denial is definitely not a river in Egypt in the Duncan household, a family that bleakly absurdist playwright Nicky Silver put through their paces with almost cruel delight in his 1993 masterpiece Pterodactyls, now lovingly revived by the ever-prolific Athena Theatre Company at the Stella Adler.

Although Pterodactyls takes place in a grandly appointed living room along the historically pish-tosh Main Line of Philadelphia and is set during the era in which the play first debuted, the spectre of the dinosaur isn’t far behind in either its own time zone or ours.

The bones of one of our gigantic reptilian predecessors that returning prodigal son Todd Duncan (Todd Kubrak) prophetically finds buried on the grounds of the family estate obviously parallels the impending fate our troubled species as we crash on into our own obsolescence at breakneck speed. “They raped the planet,” Todd offers with a kind of skewed devotion to those massive first marauding creatures of the earth, “but they cared for their young.”

As Todd arrives home after a long absence to inform his parents (Gillian Doyle and Christopher Bradley) he has AIDS (has, as opposed to dying from, he’s quick to correct), his wigged-out sister Emma (Athena’s co-founder Veronique Ory) is about to wed Tommy (Ryan Baylor), not much of a catch according to the social requirements of her designer-obsessed shopaholic mother, especially when the kid brags that along his career path he has “scratched and clawed” all the way from busboy to waiter.

Rather than trying to dissuade the certifiable Emma to abandon her plans, however, Grace Duncan instead offers Tommy a position she feels worthy of his skills: replacing her maid, whose sudden disappearance from her barking employ is not hard to imagine. Much to the horror of Grace’s husband Arthur, Tommy fits perfectly in his predecessor’s little black-and-white satin French maid outfit—and here this definitely signals out-fit—his scruffy patch of chest hair peeking curiously from above the uniform’s ruffled neckline. Worse yet, Tommy’s perfectly comfortable wearing it.

Under Patrick Varon’s sturdy direction, the classic-in-the-making Pterodactyls still has a lot going for it, this particular return to the crazy and incredibly dark Land of Silver made all the more relevant by exceptional performances all around, particularly Doyle’s wonderfully vapid mother and Ory’s perplexed innocent lost in a sea of modern dysfunction and avoidance—kinda like most of us these days in our country, a place where we’ve let a regime we know is lying brazenly about almost everything and shafting us all as it continues to make its murderous descent on the world, prevail despite the wishes of any American with a conscience left standing.

If nowhere earlier in his script, Silver’s point is made glaringly obvious in Pterodactyls’ last line, referring to the recovered dinosaur bones Todd gradually reassembles throughout the play in the corner of the family living room, long after his sister’s suicide, Tommy’s death from the bug Todd passed along to him, Arthur’s descent into an unemployed shell of his former stuffy businessman self, and Grace’s vacuous resilience to all pain as she continues to obsessively shop for Prada and come on to her gay son.

While ruminating on the mystery of what happened to the dinosaurs, Todd comes up with a scarily prophetic answer: “Maybe they just ran their course,” he suggests. “Maybe their end was just the order of things.”

Not only does that line clearly summarize the world of refutations oppressing and systematically destroying the Duncan household as envisioned by Nicky Silver in his vintage Pterodactyls, it eerily echoes the highly probable impending fate of our entire species if we don’t collectively attempt to beat extinction ourselves by bearing the responsibility to make some major changes—and purdy damned quick, too.

Pterodactyls plays through July 29 at the Stella Adler, 6773 Hollywood Bl., Hollywood; for tickets, call 818.754.1423.

* * *

TRAVIS MICHAEL HOLDER has been writing about LA theatre since 1987 and in Entertainment Today since 1990. As an actor, he received the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Best Actor Award as Kenneth Halliwell in the west coast premiere of Nasty Little Secrets at Theatre/Theater. Four years later, he was inducted into the LADCC himself, thus becoming the only member in its 39-year history to also hold an award for performance. He has also been honored with a Drama-Logue Award as Lennie in Of Mice and Men at the Egyptian Arena, four Maddy Awards, a ReviewPlays.com Award, both NAACP and GLAAD Award nominations, and five nominations from LA Weekly. Regionally, he won the Inland Theatre League Award as Ken Talley in Fifth of July, three awards for his direction and performance as Dr. Dysart in Equus, was up for Washington, DC’s Helen Hayes honors as Oscar Wilde in the world premiere of Oscar & Speranza, toured as Amos “Mr. Cellophane” Hart in Chicago, and traveled twice to New Orleans for the annual Tennessee Williams Literary Festival, opening the fest playing Williams himself in Lament for the Moths in 2003 and performing in An Ode to Tennessee last spring. Never one to suffer from typecasting, Travis’ most recent LA performances have been as Giuseppe “The Florist” Givola in Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui for Classical Theatre Lab, Ftatateeta in Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra at the Lillian, Cheswick in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at the Rubicon in Ventura, and he will appear as Dave Moss in Glengarry Glen Ross at the Egyptian Arena in Hollywood Sept. 28 to Nov. 18. As a writer, he’s also a regular contributor to Back Stage West, Gorgeous and Boulevard Magazines, and ReviewPlays.com. Five of his plays have been produced in LA and his first, Surprise Surprise, for which he wrote the screenplay with director Jerry Turner, is about to begin the international festival circuit as a feature film with Travis playing opposite John Brotherton, Luke Eberl, Deborah Shelton, Mary Jo Catlett and Jesse Boyd. His first novel, Waiting for Walk, will hopefully be published before he jumps off the goddam Hollywood Sign. www.travismichaelholder.com.

Reviewplays.com-Pterodactyls

PICK OF THE WEEK

Author Nicky Silver seems to know "… what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” He may not be The Shadow, but he manages to put his finger on some of the deepest and darkest sentiments of people, and then pries them up for exposure, wrapping them in absurd and incongruous situations. The Athena Theatre pulls another nifty number adding once again to their vast number of success laden offerings.

As families have skeletons in closets, the Duncan family’s symbolic skeleton is constructed in the living room when oldest son Todd (Todd Kubrak) returns to the family home after a few years of estrangement bringing with him some old bones he found in the garden, which he assembles sporadically, eventually turning out to be a Pterodactyls skeleton. He also makes a pronouncement that he has AIDS . One should keep in mind this story first hit the boards in 1993, when AIDS was much more lethal than today and infection was a certain death sentence. That said, the play still holds its own today with compelling and gripping situations.

The well-to-do family of Arthur and Grace Duncan (Christopher Bradley and Gillian Doyle) is somewhat taken back by the news, but the reaction is not quite what one would expect, what with daughter Emma bringing home her boyfriend Tommy and the maid quitting. (Veronique Ory and Ryan Baylor) Grace feels that it’s important to keep things in perspective, and the maid quitting is far more devastating because now she’ll have to get her own drinks. However, when she meets Tommy she badgers him into staying with them and makes him wear the maid’s uniform, forcing him to do all the house-hold chores. Daughter Emma has a serious problem. She forgets things. She forgot she had a brother, for example, and now that she’s going to marry Tommy, she seems to be more distant from reality. Arthur has lost his job as bank president, which devastates Grace because they won’t be able to keep up their life style. However will they afford Emma’s lavish wedding?

All around there are signs that this family is on its way to extinction, (a fact that Silver pounds into the audience with the metaphoric skeleton of the Pterodactyls) but their journey is a darkly lit tunnel of comedic tragedy. As the play progresses, it’s as if director Patrick Varon is guiding us through a gilded alley, and once in awhile opens a window into the family’s past where we see shades of abuse at one time, alcoholism another, repressed sexual fantasies from the father towards Emma, selfish egotism and even hatred among the family members. When Todd tells his father his life on the street, he uses brutally graphic language, to which the father reacts almost indifferently. When the mother wants to spend tender time with her son, it becomes borderline incestuous and one wonders what habits the family has practiced. Homosexual encounters, pre-marital sex and other “scandalous” activities are commonplace for these people, each of whom is marching to a different agenda that Nicky Silver has constructed without apparent regard to cohesiveness or continuity. Except that he may be giving us a look at an amalgamation of society, wrapping many of the foibles he sees into the lives of this family in hopes of sending a message.

The wonderfully gifted ensemble responds brilliantly to the challenge, with Gillian Doyle almost walking off with the show as the neurotic alcoholic, self righteous society matron who has no clue why the family is the way it is, or even how to begin interacting with her children. As usual, Veronique Ory finds that special essence of the character and allows it to take over, giving a performance that abounds with tenderness, confusion, and sympathy while Ryan Baylor is nothing if not game for spending most of the show in a French maid’s outfit, as he delivers some of the best subtle comic lines of the show. Todd Kubrak is a mix of eccentric madness, rebellion and downright arrogance playing Todd. We don’t know why he chose to return home, but clearly didn’t find what he hoped for. It’s as if Gertrude Stein’s statement of “There is no there there” applied directly to him. Christopher Bradley is a strong presence as the father who never really knew how to raise a family.
With scenes jumping back and forth from the past to the present and the characters addressing the audience as if pleading their case, one must follow this closely. In this darkly comic offering be ready to go on a highly charged ride where for every laugh there is an equal conflict and for every solution at least three new problems pop up. You’ll love it!

Veronique Ory

Pterodactyls (Emma Duncan)

ReviewPlays.com Best of 2006!

Congratulations to Charles Howerton and Veronique Ory for making ReviewPlays.com's Best of 2006 list.

Each year Jose Ruiz posts a list of his top 10 for actresses, actors, and plays.

Charles Howerton - Slow Dance on a Killing Ground -Athena Theatre
Veronique Ory Wait Until Dark -Athena Theatre

We are honored and excited for the recognition.

Full best of 2006 list - ReviewPlays.com

ReviewPlays.com- A Lie of the Mind

The people presented by author Sam Shepard are not the kind of people you want to know. To call them dysfunctional is definitely one step up, and the actors do a marvelous job bringing out the worst of the worst. If Sergio Leone hadn't used the title, Sam could have called it "The Good, the Bad - and the Ugly" and if he forgot to use the word Good not much would change. .

The two family groups are wisely divided into the two ends of the stage, and when there is a cross-over, sparks usually fly.

We first meet Jake, placing a phone call to brother Frankie from somewhere on the open road, claiming he beat up his wife Beth and killed her. It becomes evident this was not the first beating and that Jake is a hot head who loses his temper at the drop of a hat. Jason Weisgerber is electrifying as the seriously disturbed loser, whose jealousy brought on the assault.

Jamison Driskill is much more subdued and reasonable as little brother, Frankie giving a compelling performance.

Cut to the hospital, where Beth is alive, but not well. She is bandaged and delirious, apparently with serious brain damage that's causing partial loss of speech and memory. Veronique Ory carries off this difficult role with sympathetic rapport, never allowing us to know what's really in Beth's mind and what she feels. One gets the feeling that Beth has decided to use this trauma to help her get out of a bad marriage and lets events roll on as she carefully goes along for the ride. Her brother Mike is determined to avenge the beating and becomes obsessed with getting even with Jake. Jonathan Frappier has a couple of good scenes.

It's easy to see why Jake has problems when we meet Jake's mother. We don't want to say that Trudy Forbes as the mother, channels trailer trash- she's worse!

With a mother like that, trailer life would be an improvement, and the only one that seems to be immune from her madness is her daughter Sally who would be a normal, sweet girl if she could except for the time when she saw her father squashed by a truck in Mexico. Rachel Lyeria is excellent as the sister who is usually hazzled by the brothers and who shares a secret with Jake which has haunted them for years.

Lorraine, the mother harbors a deep hatred for her husband, but seems to have an inordinate affinity with Jake, claiming that from the day he was born he fell on his head and has never been well since.

Beth's parents are equally off center. Pamela Clay is just wonderful as Meg, the meek, submissive wife whose memory and motivations have been impaired by years of brow-beating by husband Baylor.

James Storm makes Baylor an almost cartoony, rifle slinging hick more interested in hunting a deer for the rack than the recovery of his daughter.

With Meg's memory problems, it is never clear if Beth's current condition is the result of partial heredity combined with the beating she suffered from Jake.

At three hours, the play sometimes drags under the weight of the dialog, but fortunately director Charlotte Gulezian keeps the action bouncing like a tennis match between the two households and has integrated some very effective sound designs and music which help to maintain alertness. She also has managed to draw out some excellent characterizations bringing dynamic life to the play. By the end, one feels that these people have no clue about their future, and are totally in the dark about their past. They allow their imagination and perceptions to influence their actions, but seldom stop to check the veracity of their thinking and when they act on first impulses, they later discover their mind may have lied to them but now it's too late. So they take the next step on another whim, which brings them deeper into the whirlpool of deceptions. Definitely another strongly carved notch on the winner's belt of Athena Theatre.
PICK OF THE WEEK

Proof

Thank you so much to everyone who came to see Athena Theatre's production of Proof.
I sincerely appreciate it!

Proof by David Auburn.

Director: Charlotte Gulezian Production Stage Manager: Kevin Jordan Scenic Design: Danny Truxaw Lighting Design: Michael Bergfeld Assistant Lighting Design: Robert Bergfeld Costume Design: Kaori Mita Sound Design: Rob Liscome Casting Director: Stephen Snyder, JS Snyder & Assoc Postcard Design: Jeremy Asher Starring Catherine: Veronique Ory Robert: Craig Braun* Hal: John Bobek Claire: Elena Fabri July 14th - July 31st Runs Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays @ 8pm; Sundays @7pm General Admission $15 The Flight Theatre at The Complex 6472 Santa Monica Blvd. Hollywood, CA 90038 Map

Click here if you are an Ovation Voter Check out our season of plays for 2005! Season tickets are now available for a discount--ONLY $25: Did you see The Shape of Things? --Make it $20 when you purchase your tickets before the show. For further details please call 818-754-1423 or Click Here

Proof from Reviewers

Critics Pick Entertainment Today
Critics Pick ReviewPlays.com

"David Auburn's award-winning play Proof, is receiving an award-winning, definitive production by Athena Theatre at the lovely Flight Theatre of the complex. Sharpen your pencils, Ovation Voters, and make your reservations now, because the run of this one could sell out within a week." -Metro LA

"Director Charlotte Gulezian has invested the play with the warmth of familial love and the elegance of math and science. Her blocking is liquid art. The actors move from one gorgeous stage picture to another. And she has elicited four amazing performances which don't leave a nuance unturned." -Metro LA

"Veronique Ory brings a palpably heartbreaking vulnerability to the role. Ory mines a quiet desperation that makes Catherine someone the audience can grieve for and with, as her beloved dad has died only a week before, leaving the rest of her life a gaping hole of contradictions." -Back Stage West

"Craig Braun looks every bit the college professor, a bit more lucid than he's supposed to be, but convincingly dedicated to his work, if not his daughter." ReviewPlays.com

"The loveliest turn comes from John Bobek, who brings a dynamic spontaneity and arresting sweetness to Hal, the geeky protege of the late professor's role that usually merely complements, not stands out with such striking results." -Back Stage West

"Elena Fabri is perfect as her bossy but well-meaning sister, managing to make us understand Claire's good intentions despite the character's officious manner." -Back Stage West

"This is a gem of a production, proof positive that Athena Theatre is more than fulfilling its mission of bringing quality theatre to a desert of mediocrity."- ReviewPlays.com

Proof - Video Trailer

Cable/DSL - Dialup - QuickTime
Try the QuickTime version if you are having trouble.

Metro LA Review- Proof

ReviewPlays.com- Proof

by Jose Ruiz

This gripping Tony and Pulitzer award winner by David Auburn, juggles the lives of four people with uncanny insight and uncomfortable realism.

...Elena Fabri as Claire is excellent portraying the apparently benevolent sister who is determined to impose her will believing that she is right no matter what. At times, you almost want to punch her out for being such a bitch, she's that convincing. Craig Braun looks every bit the college professor, a bit more lucid than he's supposed to be, but convincingly dedicated to his work, if not his daughter. John Bobek's college teacher, Hal looks more like a teen-age geek trying to make time, but his dialogue and delivery quickly convince you he's a serious student with serious ambitions, especially towards Catherine, a girl with a voluble temper and not much self assurance and a mind that knows no bounds when it comes to the mathematical abstracts. Veronique Ory can change emotions on a dime, and here she delivers a performance that has you wondering if she's the sweet daughter who loves her father enough to give up her education, a lazy opportunist lacking motivation or a genius suffering a touch of the same madness her father had. Whatever you select, it's a performance rich with feeling and insight.

This is a gem of a production, proof positive that Athena Theatre is more than fulfilling its mission of bringing quality theatre to a desert of mediocrity.

Pick of the Week

For full review: go to www.ReviewPlays.com (Warning: A lot of the story is revealed. If you have not seen it yet, I recommend you wait to read this one)

The Shape of Things

The Shape of Things closed April 2nd - Thanks to everyone who came out and supported us!

The Shape of Things by Neil LaBute
Director: Scott Schutzman
Producer: Veronique Ory

Starring
Veronique Ory, J.R. Nutt*, Daniel Wisler, Emily Happe

Opens March 18th 8pm
Previews Mar 17th
Runs Fridays and Saturdays
General Admission $15

The Actors Playpen
1514 N. Gardener St.
Los Angeles, CA 90046

http://www.theactorsplaypen.com/

Athena Theatre's 2005 Season

Purchase Season Tickets!

Athena Theatre is very proud to announce its 2005 Season!

The Shape of Things by Neil LaBute
Opens March 18 2005
runs Fridays & Saturdays at 8pm

"LaBute continues to probe the fascinating dark side of individualism, whose ultimate evil is an inability to imagine the suffering of others..." -The New Yorker

Proof by David Auburn
Opens July 15 2005
runs Fridays & Saturdays at 8pm

"...combines elements of mystey and surprise with old-fashioned storytelling to provide a compelling evening of theatre...Proof is a smart and compassionate play of ideas." -The New York Daily News

A Lie of the Mind by Sam Shepard
Opens October 27 2005
runs Fridays & Saturdays at 8pm

"a mesmerizing, emotionally raw play that once again pulls the view into Shepard's distinctive world of disturbed reality and hungry hearts." -Variety

Please sign our guest book to inquire about season tickets.

Thank you and we look forward to seeing you at the theatre!

How I Learned to Drive

October 2004

General Admission $15

Click here to print a postcard (pdf)

Playbill (click here for cast and crew bios)

Previews Oct 7th.
Runs Fridays and Saturdays @ 8PM
Oct 8th-Oct 16th

The Raven Playhouse
5233 Lankershim Blvd
N. Hollywood, CA 91601
(Click for a MAP)

Athena Theatre

Presents

How I Learned to Drive

By Paula Vogel

A play about a woman who looks back in forgiveness on a seven-year relationship with her uncle. Together they have traveled to the darkest, most intimate and unspoken of places. How I Learned To Drive is the story of a young woman whose coming-of-age in the 1960s and 70s is defined by driving lessons provided by her uncle, lessons which extend well-beyond learning the rules of the road. A beautifully crafted story unfolds her memories with breathtaking insight, wit and warmth.

Athena Theatre

Presents

How I Learned to Drive

By Paula Vogel

A play about a woman who looks back in forgiveness on a seven-year relationship with her uncle. Together they have traveled to the darkest, most intimate and unspoken of places. How I Learned To Drive is the story of a young woman whose coming-of-age in the 1960s and 70s is defined by driving lessons provided by her uncle, lessons which extend well-beyond learning the rules of the road. A beautifully crafted story unfolds her memories with breathtaking insight, wit and warmth.

COMING SOON TO THE RAVEN PLAYHOUSE!