Supernova
Los Angeles-based playwright Timothy McNeil has been building a strong reputation for his dramatic work during the past decade, both as a writer and as an actor. SUPERNOVA will only add to both of those valued reputations.
Set in a contemporary, mid-Western Iowa, the Davies family: father, John (Tony Gatto); mother, Mabel (Bonnie McNeil); and wayward son, Kip (Edward Tournier), is fracturing before our eyes. Dad’s a blue-collar assembly-line night-shift, worker; mom’s a stay-at-home slowly strangling on the loveless atmosphere, and Kip is an angry, hard-drinking and pot-smoking, rightwing loony who hates his life and everyone around him. Watching him mal-treat his best friend, Moe (Joe Wiebe), his parents, and the two women in his sexual life, young Tricia (Kelly Elizabeth) and mom’s best friend and neighbor, Fran (Gina Garrison), exposes his misogyny, racism and other assorted prejudices.
But into Mabel’s stunted life falls a long-distance telephone romance with a watch salesman, Joe Strong (playwright McNeil). The expensive watch she is buying for her worthless son is called a Supernova and the humiliations that both Joe and Mabel sustain over this over-priced wrist-watch is the glue that let’s them build a fantasy life with each other.
It’s a heart-breaking piece of theatre, ably-directed by Lindsay Allbaugh, who has cast it impeccably, wonderfully illuminating the plot through the characters’ development and the actors’ abilities. There are no weak-links in this lovely drama and, while not in an ideal spot – a small and uncomfortable Equity 99-seat-plan theatre in a scuzzy area of Hollywood – the entire production has been well-thought-through by set-designer Joel Daavid, costume-designer Louis Douglas Jacobs and composer/sound designer, Jack Arky. It is seldom that all these elements come together so forcefully in one play. But in supporting the other fundamentals: a script made up of authentic-dialogue and strong plotting, the sensitive direction and its bravura acting, they do, indeed.
SUPERNOVA runs through June 27th, 2010, at the Elephant Theatre, 6322 Santa Monica Blvd, Hollywood. Tix: 323.960.4410.