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
Wait Until Dark - The Ira Fistell Show, KABC Radio 790 AM Review
A Dark Play
Lights Up the Lounge
By Cynthia Citron
ReviewPlays.com
And The Ira Fistell Show, KABC Radio 790 AM
If Cate Caplin were a three-year-old horse she would be well on her way to winning the Triple Crown. An award-winning dancer, a creative choreographer, and a dynamic director, Caplin runs on many turfs. Currently, she is directing Frederick Knott's Wait Until Dark at the Lounge Theater in Hollywood. Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, which she choreographed, has only recently closed.
Wait Until Dark is well-remembered as a scary 1967 movie starring Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin, and Richard Crenna. So you wouldn't think a local production on a stage about the size of a kitchen table would be something to write home about. But you would be wrong. This production has you literally jumping out of your seat.
As the blind heroine terrorized by thugs, Veronique Ory will have you convinced that she is really blind. As she maneuvers around her basement apartment, glassy-eyed and arms outstretched, her mounting terror is palpable. Jon Emm, as the "sympathetic thug" offers her a brief respite until she sees through him. But Lorin McCraley, playing multiple roles, veers from the ridiculous to the truly menacing. These two are aided by John Richard Petersen, the phony police sergeant who gives credibility to the plot. At least, Ory believes him.
The plot is a silly mishmash about a doll stuffed with drugs that her husband (Tim Maloney) has carried home from a recent trip to Canada. The drugs have a street value of $50,000, which hardly seems worth all the sturm und drang and the multiple murders perpetrated in its name. But this is Greenwich Village in 1966, so it"ll be another 40 years before we start talking about illicit money by the billions.
This is a dark drama, in more ways than one. The darkness in which the heroine lives becomes very real. Especially in the final scene, which is played with no lights. And set designer Jennifer Fulmer has managed to fill the tiny stage with a full array of kitchen furnishings, plus a washing machine, a staircase, a small photography studio, and several doors. How the nine actors manage to maneuver around all this without knocking each other over is yet another testament to the directing skill of Cate Caplin.
Wait Until Dark is a worthy production of the Athena Theatre Company; it is gripping and well acted, and highly recommended for a cold, rainy night.
The Lounge Theatre is located at 6201 Santa Monica Blvd. in Hollywood. Wait Until Dark will run Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays through March 25th.
Wait Until Dark - Metro LA Review
Exerts from Metro LA Review Feb. 28-Mar. 13, 2006
Wait Until Dark rev. by Jerry L. Jackson
"Frederick Knott's Wait Until Dark was a phenomenon on Broadway in 1966 with Robert Duvall as the psychopath menacing Lee Remick, famously adapted to the screen in 1967 with Alan Arkin and Audrey Hepburn and less successfully revived in 1998 for an aborted run in New York with Quentin Tarantino and Marisa Tomei. It is intended as a thriller. To work, it must scare you."
"The actors are all experienced and I've seen some of their work to great advantage in other productions."
"Veronique Ory portrays Susy Hendrix, recently blinded and subsequently married to an often absent husband."
"In the play each of the 3 primary male characters has a distinct and different function: Lorin McCraley is supposed to be Harry Roat, Jr., the murderous, unrelenting threat that propels the story, Jon Emm (Mike Talman) and John Richard Petersen (Sgt. Carlino) are two bit con men forced into a sting on the blind heroine by the villaine."
"Samantha Klein as Gloria, the dead-pan teenaged neighbor whose childish lies and prankish theft actually set up most of the deadly action, got the warmest response of the evening as she actually went through a character arc, learning, growing, changing."
"Jennifer Fulmer's set provides perfect ambience and the appropriate claustrophobia for the final dance. Inexplicably, film-style music stings indicate where we should feel scared but only underscore the fact that we don't."
"The beauty of theatre is that a company can build, making each performance more accomplished at creating the emotional journey intended by the author."
Reviewplays.com - Wait Until Dark
Wait Until Dark - The Lounge Theatre
Back in 1967, Audrey Hepburn had the movie world on the edge of their seats in this mystery by Frederick Knott about a man who is asked to hold a doll at an airport, only to discover later that the doll becomes the central character in a murder plot that involves drugs, deceit and a blind woman who comes to the brink of death, using only her instincts to save herself.
Athena Theatre starts the year off with this spine tingling, hair raising thrill ride that redefines the proverbial cat and mouse game. Set back in the good old days where rotary phones were still in use and photographers used enlargers and chemicals, this is the story of blind Susy coping with two small time ex-cons who try to capitalize on her blindness as they search for the doll in her apartment. The tale unfolds tensely as the crooks invent a story of a police investigation of her husband, claiming that if she finds the missing doll, he can be exonerated. Mike and Carlino go to elaborate lengths to pull off their ruse, hoping to find the drugs stuffed inside the toy, but a third man named Roat enters the scene. A cold blooded killer, he is now controlling the two hoods and his stalking of Susy escalates as the story unfolds, begging the question; how will this blind woman defend herself?
Veronique Ory delivers a top notch performance, stumbling and shuffling around the apartment as the recently blinded Susy who is still learning to maneuver in the dark but has keenly developed the other senses – a factor that will eventually become her salvation. Her stalkers vary from the bumbling Carlino, played with a hint of comic relief by John Richard Petersen, a great favorite in the Orange County theatre scene, to the madman Harry Roat. Lorin McCraley, a recent riot as an off beat psychiatrist in Shrinks, makes Roat a chilling, calculating murderer who almost destroys the apartment searching for the doll. In between, is Jon Emm, who plays Mike, posing as a friend of Susy’s husband. Mike straddles the line from being almost sympathetic to being an ominous menace, and having befriended Susy early on, would have had the chance to do more harm, but one gets the feeling he almost feels sorry for her.
Samantha Klein plays teen-ager Gloria, a girl who helps Susy with the shopping and other errands and helps to figure out the connection between the men who keep visiting the apartment. Klein is overly bratty and gets a little carried away with the precocious bit, but does a credible turn around at the end. Tim Maloney appears briefly as Susy’s traveling photographer husband - Peter O’Keefe and Rod Simmons play police officers.
Tightly directed by Cate Caplin, who normally works with dance and musicals, the key to this presentation is the lighting – or in this case, the absence of light. Caplin choreographs the tiny Lounge stage with consummate imagination, as the wonderfully gifted cast maneuvers around the sparse furnishings covered in shadows with thin light rays that spurt out from strategic parts of the room. It has to be a tribute to the actors and the director that the most climactic scenes are played in total darkness, as Susy attempts to level the playing field against her captors. You hear yells – screams fill the room – furniture and dishes crash – and once in awhile a beam of light shoots out from the refrigerator – from a workbench – from a match - and finally from the front door, which brings closure to the drama as it is flung open.
Comparing the play to the 1967 film would be a little like apples and oranges, but if the audience comments at the end mean anything, this show rates high on the fright scale. For sure it will enjoy a successful run through March 25th. Reservations at: (818) 754-1423.
The Lounge is located at 6201 Santa Monica Blvd – Los Angeles, CA
From www.reviewplays.com
Wait Until Dark
Thank you so much to everyone who came to see Athena Theatre's production of Wait Until Dark.
I sincerely appreciate it!
Director: Cate Caplin (website)
Production Stage Manager: Kevin Jordan
Set Design: Jennifer Fulmer
Lighting Design: Michael Bergfeld
Costume Design: Shauna Leone
Properties: Rachel Myles
Sound Design: John Bobek
Casting Director: Stephen Snyder, JS Snyder & Assoc
Postcard Design: Jeremy Asher (website)
Starring
Jon Emm as Mike Talman
John Richard Petersen as Sgt. Carlino
Lorin McCraley as Harry Roat, Jr.
Veronique Ory as Susy Hendrix
Tim Maloney as Sam Hendrix
Samantha Klein as Gloria
Peter O'Keefe as Patrolman
Rod Simmons as Patrolman
Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays @ 8pm
February 16th thru March 25th
General Admission $15 presale on-line
Or $20 cash only at the door
The Lounge Theatre (Map)
6201 Santa Monica Blvd.
Hollywood, CA 90038
(@ El Centro, 1 blk east of Vine)
Click Picture for full size press image:
Lorin McCraley, Jon Emm, Veronique Ory, John Richard Petersen
Samantha Klein, Veronique Ory
Jon Emm, Lorin McCraley, John Richard Petersen
