Hollywood Fringe Festival Theatre Review: Glennie & Maple Break Up

Glennie & Maple Break Up is not only the title of Paul Hoan Zeidler's new play, but it’s an oft-repeated plot-point.  They break up, get back together, break up again, etc, all over the course of five scenes.  On the surface, Glennie is temperamental to say the least.  She opens the play feeling cold and it’s not long before her temperature runs the other direction.  After exiting an abusive relationship, she is pretty needy and expects a lot out of her boyfriend, Maple, who’s also shtupping another chick, Marla—his offstage mistress.  (Introductions at parties must make them sound like the Tappet brothers Click and Clack.)   The aforementioned substance of the story doesn’t leave much for the audience to chew on and the production plays more like an ambitious acting-class final project.  Each scene starts with them having just gotten back together and generally ends with them calling it quits.  The acting is nuanced. Etienne Eckert is so small you could measure her in ounces, but she carries with her a presence and her resonant voice wraps lightly around an East coast accent.  Charles Pacello and his beautiful shiny, bald crown as Maple has a nice chemistry with the raven-haired Eckert.  They perform within a literal black box on the Theatre Asylum stage, surrounded by dark walls, a tiny laundry basket brimming over with dirty clothes, and a queen-size bed made up in black sheets and accented with a huge splash of a scarlet red patchwork blanket anchored by a leopard-print pillow. 

The Sewer Socialist production was written and directed by Zeidler and is less than an hour and runs evenings tonight and June 21^st (8:30 PM) as well as 2 PM matinees (16^th, 17^th, 23^rd, 24^th).  You can find tickets here.