By Ethlie Ann Vare
A funny thing happened on the way to the Sky Pilot theater company’s production of Jeff Gould’s new play: It was originally scheduled to premiere in March, 2020. And then guess what? Frankly, though, if you took out the smartphones and the four-letter words, it could as easily have debuted in 1985. Think Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf… if it were written by Neil Simon instead of Edward Albee.
Writer Gould specializes in plays about relationships; his last was called The Marriage Zone, and his best-known is the long-running, wife-swapping-themed It’s Just Sex. So the subject is both familiar and fertile as we examine the end of three marriages. What went horribly wrong? And can we laugh at it?
There’s Carol (Laura Walker), a controlling harpy whose husband Brian (Ian Nemser) gives “wuss” a bad name. Alpha male Ken (Anthony Backman) cheats on his trophy wife Tanya (Bri Ana Wagner). Cold, sarcastic Doug (Corbin Timbrook, real-life partner of the play’s producer, Shelby Janes) hides a dark secret; his good-natured wife Angie (Marie Pettit Gregson) is a marriage and family therapist who cannot heal her own marriage.
(Note: The play is double cast. You may see an entirely different crew than I did.)
The pocket-handkerchief stage of the small (56-seat) Two Roads Theater becomes the waiting room of a divorce mediator who has been increasingly detained, thanks to a series of traffic disasters. The couples are all depending on a neutral party to work out the terms of their impending divorces from marriages that had lasted from 6 years and 25 years. In the hour and a half they are stuck there, lies will be exposed, tears will be spilled, and dick jokes will be told.
The opening audience sold out the hall and filled it with laughter, warmly receptive to the theme and the tone of the play, It was encouraging to see more than just the usual Baby Boomer cohort for local equity-waiver shows; apparently, even Millennials have relationship trouble.
Beckman, as a blustering attorney, has the best comic timing, although the physically imposing Timbrook actually gets the best punchlines. Walker puts just the right amount of humanity into Carol, someone you would just as soon murder as divorce. Wagner gives a sly spark to a standard-issue bimbo.
No new ground is broken in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Divorce, but it’s well-made comfort food. And that’s just the ticket to return to live theater in Los Angeles.
SkyPilot Theatre Company presents – A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Divorce
Written by Jeff Gould
Directed by Marc Antonio Pritchett.
Starring Ian Nemser, Laura Walker, Anthony Backman, Bri Ana Wagner, Corbin Timbrook and Marie Pettit Gregson. Also starring Kelly DeSarla, Albert Garnica, Swisyzinna Moore, Gerald Dewey, Patricia Mizen
Two Roads Theatre
4348 Tujunga Avenue, Studio City, CA 91604.
July 9, 10, 16, 17, 23, 24, 30, 31, August 6, 7, 27, 28, September 3, 4, 10, 11.
Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. Sundays at 3:00 p.m.
