Theater Review
by Ruth Arnell
a still small voice
By Mitch Hale
Directed by John Ferraro
If you’re looking for something that’s "True," that’s "Real," and that’s priced to keep you in valet parking and post-show sushi, it’s time to hit Mitch Hale’s a still small voice at the Complex Theatre in Hollywood. If you’re looking for poppy zingers and zany antics, on the other hand, Sweet Charity is still at the Pantages. Tickets are $70 and it runs through mid-October.
a still small voice is the inaugural presentation of the 4th Dimension Theater Company. If it gives any indication of the quality of the company’s future endeavors, go ahead and learn the name of the guys who park your car out front – you’ll be seeing a lot of them in the seasons to come.
The events in the show take place in a church basement during one of the worst storms in Los Angeles history. The show’s four characters- Ray, Aaron, Joe, and Judy- are members of an AA-type organization called the Last Chance Group, which meets to help its members replace the drugs and alcohol in their lives with dogma and rhetoric. Not surprisingly, the parent organization’s well-intentioned propaganda isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and each person is forced to come to terms with their own mistakes and hypocrisy if things are ever going to get better. You know – like in real life, but three feet up and with better lighting.
a still small voice peaks into the dingy stomping grounds of a damaged ex-junkie, an angry bum, a flustered dweeb, and a suburban woman too attractive and wealthy to not understand pain. In the execution of these roles, Director John Ferrarro allowed his cast to take full advantage of the kinds of natural pauses and speaking rhythms that would make most actors jealous, and the results are artistically inspiring. In sharp contrast to the unfortunately frequent disconnect that exists between theater and life, Ferraro designed a show that hit home through reality cultured on the way real people really behave.
Ray (Jason McNeil) is a regenerated former heroin addict of the Lennie Small variety, whose new drug of choice is the great "I Am." When the first four minutes of the show consisted of watching him set up chairs and a coffee pot with all the focus of a kindergartener tying their shoes, I considered passing off this review onto someone else. Somehow I’d forgotten that an actor can play "simple" effectively without musical-theater hysterics or philosophical buffoonery a la Edward Albee. McNeil served as my welcome reminder.
Ray’s intense mood swings, coupled with his almost childlike naïveté, forced McNeil to plant his interpretation where all great performances start: in the instincts of the individual actor. The Ray we see is a real person who, in the midst of breaking himself, allows himself to be reborn, and Jason McNeil does not disappoint as he shares Ray’s two hour testimony – Glory hallelujah.
Then there’s Aaron (Kenny Johnston), a self-proclaimed bum who spends his time looping the noose of his unhappiness around the necks of others, while mocking those who question his motives. Guys like him offer justification for raised blood pressure at the sight of bums sleeping on the corner. When he’s not picking fights with Ray or needling the group’s leader to his breaking point, he’s having it out with the group’s buxom suburbutante whom he taunts for being everything he is not.
Johnston’s Aaron is both funny and abrasive, cool and ridiculous, sharp and hopelessly lost. The world may be accustomed to sympathetic portrayals of men like Aaron, but rarely are these portrayals also effectively comedic. In implementing this dichotomy in Aaron, Hale develops an unexpectedly complex character, and Johnston does not stoop for a moment to portraying a mere caricature.
Some of the strongest comedy in the show comes from Joe (Jay Laisne), the recovery group’s surprisingly inappropriate leader. Every gesture, every glance, every cough, laugh, punch, sob and puff comes straight from the well-intentioned, self-maligned heart of one very socially awkward man in a tacky Hawaiian shirt. Laisne’s performance- one of technical finesse fully absorbed into brilliant comedic subtlety- is golden start to finish. Even the lines he didn’t say had the audience rolling.
The dramatic gem of this character is the achingly unfunny façade Joe wears for other group members just starting out on their Adventures in Sobriety. In the end, the lies he’s lived bulldoze this pretense right in front of Ray, one of the people he’d tried so desperately to support.
Judy (Steffanie Thomas), like Ray, is a role difficult to play honestly and let the audience take as they will. Loaded with cash, opportunity, and the brains to back it all up, Judy initially comes across as the quintessential suburban soccer mom of indeterminate age and personal history. With her absence of back story it would be easy to write her off as a partier in college who was weak enough to let her antics catch up to her. In her current incarnation as The On-the-Wagon Woman, however, she gives the unshakable impression that whatever she’s not telling is more than you would probably ever believe.
Thomas creates real solidity in the character of Judy – the kind found in people who’ve reconstructed sturdy foundation upon sturdy foundation under lives they themselves have sabotaged. The kind that only has all the answers when all the questions have run out. So there’s little surprise that her no-nonsense consolation finally brings Aaron, Ray and Joe to a point of injecting some much needed patience and honesty into the room – the kind of honesty that makes a savior out of dogma and rhetoric.
And therein lies Hale’s greatest feat in this production: clichés that too often accompany imminent failure leak through sources simultaneously so socially foreign and so personally familiar that they actually mean something again. In this dichotomy the patronizing lingo of self-help gives way so the still, small truths behind it can be revealed.
There is still time to catch the show before it closes on October 8th, but don’t wait too long to buy tickets. For a production with a healthy habit of selling out, it’d be a shame to end up kicking yourself all the way back to pick up your keys after getting turned away at the door.
a still small voice
Starring: Kenny Johnston (Aaron), Jay Laisne (Sweater Joe), Jason McNeil (Ray), Steffanie Thomas (Judy)
Written by: Mitch Hale
Directed by: John Ferraro
When: Through October 8
Where: Complex (Ruby) Theatre, 6476 Santa Monica Blvd, Hollywood, CA 90038
Parking: Valet Parking (street parking also available)
Tickets: $20 ($15 students and seniors)
Call: (323) 960-1055