Director/Producer Deborah Geffner walked onto the stage of the Open Fist Theatre during a Special Event Preview June 10th to announce the Purple Turtle Productions’ world premiere of Jennifer Aniston Stole My Life. She has a voice similar to Wendie Malick and once she exited, a drum roll introduces a spotlight hitting Barbara Keegan, who plays down-on-her-luck character actor Rue. With her redheaded bob with bangs, she looks like an Irish Ann Jillian who hails from the same comedic class as 80s legend Paula Poundstone. She wears solid green and purple pantsuits and doles out an awful(ly short) bit that lands with a huge kerthunk. At times, we’re watching yet another sad LA story about an artist just wanting to make a living in their chosen trade. The play covers the constricting nature of the business that cannibalizes itself and destroys most everything in its path, including many of the strong and just about all of the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, while touching on the sheer heartless randomness of the industry. But, the cautionary tale also rises above the subject matter by giving us a fresh, harrowing tragedy.
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| Jesse Holcomb as Lo |
Rue lives and breathes the business, and prides herself on the “inside scoop” of her most mundane short-lived adventures with television shows like Two and a Half Men (“Charlie had the sniffles that day”), but she keeps relentlessly optimistic (“Look out world, here comes a stand-up girl”), as she is the sole provider of every aspect of fuel for her family. Her unemployed adult daughter Lo (Jesse Holcomb) has entertainment magazines strewn across the living room. You can hear Lo obsessively snipping the glossy magazine pages with her scissors as she assembles a colossal collage that slowly covers a pitch-black picture that can be best described as a powered-down 52” flat-screen. Lo only discusses matters related to celebrity and entertainment, as she spews out rapid fire descriptions of her favorite TV programs.
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| Barbara Keegan, Diana Wright |
She’s a self-destructive former child actor dressed in pink spandex with a closet full of woolly and colorful leg warmers. When Rue takes on a tenant to help cover the cost of their two-bedroom NoHo apartment, Shari (Diana Wright) makes the mistake of recognizing Lo from her once popular series, Homework Hijinks. “You never sing that song,” Rue implores her new roommate. It’s a hilarious bit that soon becomes bittersweet as we learn just exactly how disturbed Lo is, as mother medicates mentally-deranged daughter with pills, when TV isn’t enough. “Hold on, I’ve got your magic potion right here,” Rue consoles her before sending Lo off into a somnambulist state.
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| Diana Wright |
Shari is a thinly-veiled Scientologist who looks like a blond Sarah Silverman, but is impressionable enough to accept the help of Morty (Barry Gordon), Rue’s neighbor and friend dressed in fake yellow snake-skinned boots and black Levi’s. He’s of ill-repute, but he’s there for Rue and always willing to lend a hand (as far as his lecherous hand will take him). Both Wright and Gordon offer delightful support. Eventually, fate takes its course, and Rue is often found freezing time, addressing the audience, at one point explaining the source of the title. The almost myopic take on the business sometimes loses sight of its audience, but keeps things clipping along. Puzzle pieces of Lo’s collage come together through scene transitions. The title, like Lo’s art piece has a randomness to it that at first rings false, but the final assembly eventually serves as a hallow emblem of the lives that have become of these women. The title of the play works in spite of itself.
With a business filled with so many talented people who want to work, an actor whose entire world is their craft can only pass blame for their lack of success on bad luck and/or those who make it instead of them. Jennifer Aniston does play the victim card in a way and why should we care about these characters? At the heart of the script is the love Rue has for daughter, as screwed up as it is, and their relationship is further strengthened by the chemistry between Keegan and Holcomb. The duo are a couple of lost souls with only each other as road maps. Nervous at first, Keegan’s TV-sit-com delivery eventually settles into the production and runs much deeper than meets the eye, especially after it's finished and you allow the performance to simmer within you. In the teary-eyed conclusion, Rue’s normally perfunctory wink carries with it an unexpected pain.
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| Wright, Barry Gordon, Keegan, Holcomb |
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| Director/Producer Deborah Geffner's first role was in the Bob Fosse classic All That Jazz |
The other day, there was a unrelated function going on before a show I saw at the Stella Adler. I don’t know what the deal was about, but, on the surface, there appeared to be a lot of stage moms with their eager daughters, kind of reminding me something out of Toddler’s & Tiaras. I could have been completely off on my superficial impression of the scene (and they may have been there for an event that had nothing to do with acting), but my more skeptical reactionary side immediately leapt to the imaginary “defense” of the preteen and teenage girls not enjoying a childhood free of anything remotely Hollywood. (Isn’t it bad enough that they, and a contingent of young men, likely judge themselves, at least partially, for not measuring up to a physical ideal set by the media?) But, then, you always have a Jodie Foster and Elle Fanning in the pack who possess a preternatural intelligence, confidence, and healthy sense of self, that can handle the cruelest LA environments and were born stars. But, they are the exception and not the norm.
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| Barry Gordon teaches college courses, has a law degree, ran for US Congress, was the longest-serving SAG president ever, runs his own talk show, and still had time to star in this play |
There’s a Pauline Kael line from way back that questions Linda Blair’s parents, et al, contemplating how anyone in their right mind would allow their kid to try out for The Exorcist. I try not to be judgmental of others, especially parents (when I’m not even one myself), but it too leaves me scratching my head. How could anyone put their child through that extreme form of prostitution? What's the price and is it really worth it, whether the child begs for it or not? I don’t get it. But, Jennifer Aniston provides a mother who genuinely loved her daughter (up until a point), where the entertainment bug was buried deep in her immune system from such a young age it immediately set root in her daughter. “I’ve been in the business of show since I was 16 years old,” Rue repeats herself. The industry was kind to Lo initially, but its very branches that gaveth, tooketh away, leaving an empty shell of a person with no self-value. This is what becomes of off-screen movie causalities. If it’s not drug overdoses, suicide, it’s something else equally heartbreaking, and Jennifer Aniston presents an original interpretation of that disease in our culture.
[7/2 UPDATE: After a successful sold-out run at the Hollywood Fringe Festival (including a nomination for Best in Theatre--ahem, the only show I voted for which got any recognition), the cast will return to the Hudson Guild Theatre and perform through July 22nd. You can buy tickets here or by clicking on the Plays 411 logo to the right.]
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