[NEohioPAL] Review of "Durang Durang" at the CVLT

[Bob Abelman]

Two out of three ain't bad at CVLT's 'Durang Durang'

 

Bob Abelman

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times, Geauga Times Courier

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review appeared in the News-Herald 7/16/10

 

Playwright Christopher Durang has carved out a nice career parodying classic American plays and satirizing the American psyche.  His work is at once disturbingly absurd, deliciously clever and downright silly, which makes for a great evening's entertainment.

 

In Durang Durang, a collection of one-act plays, absurdity, cleverness and silly are well represented.  However, in the Chagrin Valley Little Theater production of this work, currently on stage at the intimate River Street Playhouse, only two of these three creative characteristics are apparent.  Absurdity-the cutting edge that makes Durang Durang-is disappointedly blunted.

 

The collection consists of two acts with three distinctive pieces in each.  The first act begins with a single character-a Mrs. Sorken-who comes out to offer the audience a stream of consciousness treatise on the Theatre.  This is followed by parodies of Tennessee Williams' A Glass Menagerie and Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind. 

 

It is not the unexplained elimination of the Shepard parody from the evening's Act I offerings that is responsible for the absence of absurdity.  These pieces were all clearly built for little more than silly and the CVLT players hit the mark brilliantly.  

 

Yvonne Pilarczyk is hilarious as the flighty and slightly inebriated Mrs. Sorken, who explains why the word drama appears in Dramamine.  She starts the production on a delightfully bizarre note.

 

Similarly, Harriet DeVito, Andrew Parmelee, Robert Branch and Kacey Durbin are wonderful in Durang's distorted take on the damaged Wingfield family in A Glass Menagerie.  Here, Laura is replaced by a pathetic hypochondriac named Lawrence, the "gentleman caller" is a lesbian, and Tom cruises movies for young sailors.  Those unfamiliar with Williams' drama will shake their head in confusion while those familiar with the classic will shake their head in disbelief at Durang's blatant irreverence. 

 

It is in the Act II that the welcome disorienting irrationality implicit in all three of Durang's one-act plays fails to surface.

 

"Nina in the Morning" is a strange and very clever piece in which a preposterously narcissistic, wealthy woman's relatively meaningless day is narrated aloud while enacted as if it were profoundly significant.   The performances by Pilarczyk, Parmelee, Andrew Gorgeny and Melvin Mason are very funny but don't quite capture all that the playwright intended.

 

Similarly, "Business Lunch at the Russian Tea Room" falls a bit flat.  Chris, played well by Parmelee, is a writer who has a most peculiar business meeting with a film executive.  Natalie Dolezal does a delightful turn as the executive and some of the staging shows promising signs that the piece's surrealism will come to fruition-such as when one scene casually morphs into the next.  Unfortunately, this piece comes across as merely quirky.

 

"Wanda's Visit" is about a married couple whose lives are thrown into an increasingly insane spin by a visit from an ex-girlfriend from hell.  Featuring Kacey Durbin as Marsha, the play's director Dan Sekanic as Jim, and Dolezal as the ex-girlfriend Wanda, this play comes the closest to the Durang trifecta.  It's light and silly premise grows dark, and Dolezal takes some wonderful risks as Wanda.  However, this one-act merely teeters on the peculiar and never quite ventures into the daring realm of disturbance.

 

Although a full-bodied Durang would have been preferred, an evening of clever and silly one-acts by the playwright is still an evening well spent.  

 

Durang Durang continues through July 24 at the Chagrin Valley Little Theatre's River Street Playhouse in Chagrin Falls.  For tickets, which are $10, call 440-247-8955 or visit www.cvlt.org.
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