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Metamorphoses - Slideshow

Metamorphoses

By Mary Zimmerman
Based on the Myths of Ovid

Thursday, July 10th through Saturday, August 9th
Thurs-Sat at 8PM; Sun at 2pm

The Historic Lankershim Arts Center
5108 Lankershim Blvd. North Hollywood, CA 91601

“Technically, of course, water is not the element in which we humans usually move. Ms. Zimmerman makes you see it as our truest natural environment: the place in which dreams and reality, the primal and the particular melt and merge, devastate and console.” – Ben Brantley, New York Times
August 1, 2008…Los Angeles…The award-winning, critically acclaimed Athena Theatre is entering its fifth season, proud to present their first production for the 2008 season, Mary Zimmerman’s astounding theatrical experience Metamorphoses, based on the Greek myths of Ovid.

Metamorphoses opened in New York in 2001 and in Los Angeles at the Mark Taper Forum in 2002. What is extraordinary about the play is that its scenes are played in and around a swimming pool. This is not only an innovative concept for theatre – one that definitely attracts an older and younger audience alike, but artistically adds unforgettable touches of beauty for all that see it.
The stories in Metamorphoses are the most exciting and astonishing ever written. They are full of comedy, tragedy, pathos, laughter, tears, passion, violence, grief, regret and redemption. Six male and six female actors portray such characters as Midas, Eros, Bacchus, Zeus, Aphrodite, Ceres and Psyche. To quote the Wall Street Journal, “Funny one moment, achingly sorrowful the next, Metamorphoses somehow manages to both lift you out of the moment you’re living in and speak to it with piercing directness.”

Playwright: Mary Zimmerman
Director: Patrick Varon
Movement Director: Adria Dawn
Production Stage Manager: Kevin Jordan
Assistant Stage Manager: Monica Greene
Set Design: Stefan Depner
Lighting Design: Johnny Ryman
Costume Design: Kaori Mita
Projection Design: Eric Silva
Sound Design: David B. Marling
Composer: Andrew Edwards
Properties Design: Elspeth Weingarten
Publicity: Don Grigware
Postcard Design: Jeremy Asher

Starring
Brett Aune as Vertumnus and others
Sally Conway as Alcyone and others
Robin Daléa as Nursemaid and others
Sara Beth Lane as Aphrodite and others
West Liang as Orpheus and others
John A. Lorenz as Phaeton and others
Billy Mayo as Erysichthon and others
Veronique Ory as Eurydice and others
Guy Perry as Hunger and others
Gugun Deep Singh as Midas and others
Tania Verafield as Myrrha and others

General Admission $20 presale on-line
Or $25 cash only at the door

Ovation Award Eligible LAStageAlliance.com

Reservations: 818-754-1423

Wheelchair accessible, plenty of street parking

Please note: Eros, God of Love, is nude for a few minutes ... "to make us transparent." It is in the Mary Zimmerman text which we are following.

Note from our Director:
So here we are... METAMORPHOSES by Mary Zimmerman... such a bold and brave choice of material for the Athena Theatre Company! After all, our namesake is drawn from the goddess of heroic endeavor. Indeed what a storied and heroic endeavor this show has been for us...
Before we began our epic journey into the unknown, we understood this show had special challenges that would demand high amounts of interpretation, creative energy and stagecraft to render. With the blessings of Athena herself, we started on our humbling task of realizing one of the most poetic plays ever written.
Our understanding of the material would be different from the start....
An intelligent and honest understanding of Ovid, Slavitt and Zimmerman would serve as the basis for a more personal and authentic production. An ethnically diverse cast would also best service the text by demonstrating the universal struggles of love, loss and the inevitability of change. Although these myths are classic in their origin, they remain universal in their meaning and appeal.
As we proceeded, we understood the complications of maintaining a large body of water on stage. After an exhaustive search for space, we decided to bring this play here to the historic Lankershim Arts Center. The LAC was perfect for all the right reasons; location, audiences, staffing, etc. Besides, it was a former Department of Water and Power Building! Where else would a play with water be staged? Only late into the rehearsal was an assessment of the building made. Math won. Water weighs 8.337lbs per gallon. Multiplied by the 3,000 gallons we suggested, we about to place over 25,000lbs of water stress above the art gallery. It was simply was not a risk LAC was unwilling to take. Stage magic and the willing suspension of disbelief would be our answer. Perhaps we don't have the water, but we do have the power. The power to suggest. The power to imagine. The power to create and the power to dream....
Come dream with us for a while won't you?
ab imo pectore...
P.Varon (July 2008)

Past Productions

2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003

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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.

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!

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.

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