GET A GRIP!
BELLEVILLE. What a romantic environment to get a handle on young love in a still evolving, “green” marriage! From the top of the show when “Abby” (Anna Camp) first enters the scene and finds her husband “Zack” (Thomas Sadoski) fully engaged with a porn viewing experience, the audience knows that turmoil lies ahead in this Amy Herzog play living and breathing on the stage of PASADENA PLAYHOUSE in Pasadena, Greater Los Angeles (LA).
The audience senses that this is destined to be a dissection of a typical domestic drama wherein the couple maneuvers the hills and valleys of a troubled relationship. One of the reasons this critic occasionally loves to enter an audience experience as a total newbie (stone cold clueless about the play) is borne out by the surprises provided by Ms. Herzog as the play unfolds. The reader likely will miss possible spoilers in this review so that this guy can protect the joy ride that the audience may choose to embrace. What begins as that aforementioned family drama proceeds unerringly to rarefied dramatic territory – a psychological thriller.
Lean forward in one’s seat time. Anxious glances at your companion time. Gritting the teeth time. And – ultimately – covering the eyes time. It’s all on the Playhouse stage.
Anna Camp delivers wonderfully as the slightly unbalanced, emotionally fragile expatriate, sequestered in Paris at her husband’s behest and not liking it one iota. Thomas Sadoski helplessly attempts to stabilize their relationship by catering to her whims. Nothing is as it seems, though, and the power balance between them shifts more than once. Both Ms. Camp and Mr. Sadoski fully inhabit their roles, setting up quite a few revelations arising from a disastrous date night.
Not only that, the other two actors in the production, landlords “Alioune” (Moe Jeudy-Lamour) and “Amina” (Sharon Pierre-Louis), demonstrate conflicted relationships with their tenants and manifest key roles in the climactic moments in the play. Fine work from both of them.
No doubt director Jenna Worsham and her creative team elicit the promise of the script in guiding first rate performances and constructing exceptional technical trappings as well.
BELLEVILLE provides an Eiffel Tower ride to the top of one’s emotional thermometer. Amy Herzog devises a crackerjack play here. Aujourd’hui, now, today…get thee to the Pasadena Playhouse!
(N.B. Visit Oh My Pan Bakery & Tea House while in Pasadena, Greater Los Angeles (LA).)
Theatre Curtain Calling…Reviewing the Situation
