The West Coast premiere of the acclaimed off-Broadway hit by Nicky Silver (Broadway’s The Lyons). Celebrated actress Audrey Langham reaches her breaking point while rehearsing Medea in Chicago — walking off the stage, out of the production and into her married daughter’s summer house in Cape Cod, where her unexpected and unwelcome arrival sets off a chain of events alternately hilarious and harrowing. “Critic’s Pick… An unconditional treat… Mr. Silver is a dramatist with an original and thoroughly sustained tragicomic worldview.” — Ben Brantley, The New York Times. Indie Chi Productions presents a visiting production at the Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles, 90025; Feb, 28 – April 21; $32-$37; (310) 477-2055 x2; www.odysseytheatre.com
Too Much Sun
Reviews
This is an important play. Not only in its examination of secrets but also in serving as a guide about how to continue living and loving as life reveals them to us. No matter whom you come the Odyssey Theater with, I'll bet you leave with questions.
The old theatre saw holds that, typically, within a dramatic framework, when the onslaught of chaos results in a funeral we have a tragedy, and when it concludes in a wedding, a comedy.
To Silver's credit he plows unflinchingly right through that concept ending with both a wedding and a funeral. But what he fails to do is to establish for the audience what is at stake in the battle to come, or why we should care about those characters destined to fall victim on its bloody field.
Silver is a rare farceur whose work is always welcome.
The generic Cape Cod cottage porch and adjacent beach locale, scenic design by Alex M. Calle, are the perfect bland backdrops to the intense plot lines. Director Bart DeLorenzo guides this capable cast and adroitly blends the comedy with the drama.
Despite that, the actors are terrific, particularly Cary, whose Audrey is so narcissistic and self-involved we should detest her rather than root for her every step of the way as we do.
Too Much Sun may take its time in revealing what a truly fine play it is, but once it does, it's clear Nicky Silver has come up with another darkly comedic winner. The same can be said for its Odyssey Theatre guest production West Coast Premiere.
Nicky Silver's early plays were sharp, acerbic, and hilarious flights of absurdist fantasy though always tinged with underlying darkness and a jolt of real pain. Recently his plays have become more realistic without sacrificing Silver's rapid-fire wit. With The Lyons, the playwright experimented with abrupt tonal shifts and made it work. Too Much Sun, now having its West Coast premiere at the Odyssey, is a different kind of experiment that is far less successful.
In the end, none of the individuals end up as they began, but because they are never fully characterized and seem so inconsequential, it matters not.
Director (Bart DeLorenzo) and his fabulous cast and crew have put this gem of a production together at the stellar Odyssey Theatre, where the bar is as high as Mount Olympus... Go see it; you will be well rewarded!
In Too Much Sun, author Silver flits between light and dark, humor and tragedy, in Joe Orton fashion. His group portrait of people struggling to overcome their hang-ups and find a way to remake themselves is a touching one. But above all, it is the bigger-than-life Audrey who makes this play work as well as it does.
With all the talent behind it – not the least of which belongs to its gifted playwright – there's no surprise in the fact that “Too Much Sun” is a completely enjoyable theatrical experience, with just the right mix of the traditional and the edgy to make it feel both less and more “dangerous” than it is. What comes as a bonus is the reflective, almost uplifting calm that comes at the end of a play that started out seeming like a hard-edged, raucous farce.
I owe this insight to my Jungian psychotherapist friend Jane, who joined me seeing this play: Why Medea? Clearly Medea is what most people would call a bad mother: Driven half-mad by her lover's desertion, leaving her with two young kids, she proceeds to take her revenge on him by murdering the children. It's an often freely adapted Greek myth that most theatergoers are familiar with. So Audrey subconsciously is terrified by this play, acknowledging on some level that she has been an extremely poor mother to Kitty, and literally cannot get through it. The rest of the play unfolds as a still unconscious expiation of her guilt. She returns “home”—that is, to Kitty and Dennis's home—to start the work of repair.
TOO MUCH SUN is well written, beautifully acted, and has just the right amount of pain and pleasure, laughs and tears. There is also the dark wit which has characterized Nicky Silver's plays over the years. AUDIENCE ALERT: This is definitely at least PG-13, so leave the kids at home.
This play has substance, humor and heart. Playwright Silver, who now resides in London, is a master of creating people with whom you can empathize as we get to know them well, warts and all. Each of his characters are given the opportunity to reveal their personality with lines and actions that grab and hold our interest. You leave the theatre as you would at the end of a great repast.Well sated and anxious to share all the delights with your friends.
The cast, under the sure hand of director Bart DeLorenzo, individually and as an ensemble, creates vivid, unique characters of considerable subtlety and intensity, easily standing up to the thousand-watt star power of Ms. Cary.
This is a fine piece of work. The text is a bit more expository than it needs to be here and there, and there is an epilogue that feels unnecessary, but Silver forges an involving and emotionally expansive world in the zone where comedy and drama meet. And he astutely explores the possibilities marriage might hold for characters passing their middle years....
Director Bart DeLorenzo expertly calibrates the changing emotional tones that give the play its resonance and impact.
In general, the piece alternates between serious and comedic sequences with little stylistic coherence, while the “transformative” ending feels phony, unearned. But it would be wrong to leave out that the opening night audience seemed entertained, and most audiences will probably find a great deal to be amused by in this minor effort by a strong, often elegant writer.
This is an important play. Not only in its examination of secrets but also in serving as a guide about how to continue living and loving as life reveals them to us. No matter whom you come the Odyssey Theater with, I'll bet you leave with questions.
The old theatre saw holds that, typically, within a dramatic framework, when the onslaught of chaos results in a funeral we have a tragedy, and when it concludes in a wedding, a comedy.
To Silver's credit he plows unflinchingly right through that concept ending with both a wedding and a funeral. But what he fails to do is to establish for the audience what is at stake in the battle to come, or why we should care about those characters destined to fall victim on its bloody field.
Silver is a rare farceur whose work is always welcome.
The generic Cape Cod cottage porch and adjacent beach locale, scenic design by Alex M. Calle, are the perfect bland backdrops to the intense plot lines. Director Bart DeLorenzo guides this capable cast and adroitly blends the comedy with the drama.
Despite that, the actors are terrific, particularly Cary, whose Audrey is so narcissistic and self-involved we should detest her rather than root for her every step of the way as we do.
Too Much Sun may take its time in revealing what a truly fine play it is, but once it does, it's clear Nicky Silver has come up with another darkly comedic winner. The same can be said for its Odyssey Theatre guest production West Coast Premiere.
Nicky Silver's early plays were sharp, acerbic, and hilarious flights of absurdist fantasy though always tinged with underlying darkness and a jolt of real pain. Recently his plays have become more realistic without sacrificing Silver's rapid-fire wit. With The Lyons, the playwright experimented with abrupt tonal shifts and made it work. Too Much Sun, now having its West Coast premiere at the Odyssey, is a different kind of experiment that is far less successful.
In the end, none of the individuals end up as they began, but because they are never fully characterized and seem so inconsequential, it matters not.
Director (Bart DeLorenzo) and his fabulous cast and crew have put this gem of a production together at the stellar Odyssey Theatre, where the bar is as high as Mount Olympus... Go see it; you will be well rewarded!
In Too Much Sun, author Silver flits between light and dark, humor and tragedy, in Joe Orton fashion. His group portrait of people struggling to overcome their hang-ups and find a way to remake themselves is a touching one. But above all, it is the bigger-than-life Audrey who makes this play work as well as it does.
With all the talent behind it – not the least of which belongs to its gifted playwright – there's no surprise in the fact that “Too Much Sun” is a completely enjoyable theatrical experience, with just the right mix of the traditional and the edgy to make it feel both less and more “dangerous” than it is. What comes as a bonus is the reflective, almost uplifting calm that comes at the end of a play that started out seeming like a hard-edged, raucous farce.
I owe this insight to my Jungian psychotherapist friend Jane, who joined me seeing this play: Why Medea? Clearly Medea is what most people would call a bad mother: Driven half-mad by her lover's desertion, leaving her with two young kids, she proceeds to take her revenge on him by murdering the children. It's an often freely adapted Greek myth that most theatergoers are familiar with. So Audrey subconsciously is terrified by this play, acknowledging on some level that she has been an extremely poor mother to Kitty, and literally cannot get through it. The rest of the play unfolds as a still unconscious expiation of her guilt. She returns “home”—that is, to Kitty and Dennis's home—to start the work of repair.
TOO MUCH SUN is well written, beautifully acted, and has just the right amount of pain and pleasure, laughs and tears. There is also the dark wit which has characterized Nicky Silver's plays over the years. AUDIENCE ALERT: This is definitely at least PG-13, so leave the kids at home.
This play has substance, humor and heart. Playwright Silver, who now resides in London, is a master of creating people with whom you can empathize as we get to know them well, warts and all. Each of his characters are given the opportunity to reveal their personality with lines and actions that grab and hold our interest. You leave the theatre as you would at the end of a great repast.Well sated and anxious to share all the delights with your friends.
The cast, under the sure hand of director Bart DeLorenzo, individually and as an ensemble, creates vivid, unique characters of considerable subtlety and intensity, easily standing up to the thousand-watt star power of Ms. Cary.
This is a fine piece of work. The text is a bit more expository than it needs to be here and there, and there is an epilogue that feels unnecessary, but Silver forges an involving and emotionally expansive world in the zone where comedy and drama meet. And he astutely explores the possibilities marriage might hold for characters passing their middle years....
Director Bart DeLorenzo expertly calibrates the changing emotional tones that give the play its resonance and impact.
In general, the piece alternates between serious and comedic sequences with little stylistic coherence, while the “transformative” ending feels phony, unearned. But it would be wrong to leave out that the opening night audience seemed entertained, and most audiences will probably find a great deal to be amused by in this minor effort by a strong, often elegant writer.