FEBRUARY 12 - MARCH 14
The McCadden Place Theatre
1157 N. McCadden Place

a world premiere by Paul Zimmerman	directed by Chris Fields
with Enrico Colantoni, Christine Estabrook, Tara Karsian & Anna Perilo
set design David Offner	light design Jeremy Pivnick
costume design Elizabeth Palmer	sound design Drew Dalzell
assistant director Jf Pryor	production stage mgr Emily Dias
produced by Lauren Bass

Russell (Enrico Colantoni) shows his wife Wanda (Tara Karsian) the time


Harriet (Christine Estabrook) does her speech


Russell (Enrico Colantoni) writes his children's story


Russell (Enrico Colantoni) writes his children's story


Harriet (Christine Estabrook) gets a yelling
from her sister Wanda (Tara Karsian)


Harriet (Christine Estabrook) changes her speech
"on a whim" for her sister Wanda (Tara Karsian)


Russell (Enrico Colantoni) chats with Brenda (Anna Perilo)


Russell (Enrico Colantoni) and wife Wanda (Tara Karsian)
fend off an attack from Harriet


Russell (E. Colantoni), Harriet (C. Estabrook),
Wanda (T. Karsian) and Brenda (A. Perilo) go at it.


Brenda (Anna Perillo) is left alone to ponder




**RECOMMENDED**
February 19, 2004

Paul Zimmerman’s new play taps into the tumult simmering beneath the façade of sleepy suburbia, a communal id that’s freed of restraint, a scream of consciousness — crazy and mean and mostly hilarious. Zimmerman’s work is a wild screed that could wobble out of control in lesser hands, but director Chris Fields keeps the focus precise, reaping maximum comic value from just about every line. David Offner’s set design is both creative and symbolically resonant, looking like Rodeo Drive after a bomb exploded; the air is filled with designer bags and televisions and carpet swatches, the detritus of consumerism literally raining down on the characters’ heads. Paranoid Russell (Enrico Colantoni) hates everything, while his exhausted wife, Wanda (Tara Karsian), merely hates Russell. Harriet (Christine Estabrook) is neurotic and agoraphobic, which worries/irritates her college-bound daughter, Brenda (Anna Perilo). Separately these familes are a mess, but once brought together the manias increase exponentially. The cast is superb. Colantoni scores as the most damaged of the protagonists, vacancy and shrill madness vying for space behind Russell’s eyes. Estabrook does a virtuoso turn with the collection of tics that is Harriet; her comedic delivery is so precise, it shines. Karsian makes a terrific slow-burn transition from resignation to outright hatred, and Perilo impressively balances the piece as the only sane character in sight.

-Terry Morgan

 


**CRITIC'S PICK**
March 4, 2004

Wanda sits in her Kmart top, reading O magazine and watching game shows on TV as her husband, an author of children's books, is out buying a polo shirt that won't make him look like Bozo the Clown. He's in an insane tizzy when he returns, however, sure that there's a plot to make him buy one that is too big so that at the next barbecue they host for friends, the long front tail of the shirt will catch fire on the grill and he'll have to jump into the pool to survive the flames. The problem is that he can't swim. Wanda sighs, continuing to thumb through her magazine. "We don't have any friends, Russell, and we don't have a pool." She's used to such tirades.

Pigs and Bugs is Ibsen on crack. Suburban life isn't all PTA and shopping malls in Paul Zimmerman's amazingly twisted and delectable play, perhaps one of the darkest--and funniest--to hit Los Angeles stages in many months. Enrico Colantoni and Tara Karsian are hilarious as Russell and his long-suffering Wanda, as are Christine Estabrook as Wanda's agoraphobic sister, Harriet (about whom Russell concludes, "Agoraphobia wouldn't be so bad; you could get a lot of stuff done around the house"), and Anna Perilo as Harriet's almost normal, college-bound daughter, Brenda (just give her a few years). Chris Fields' direction is suitably nonstop, putting these four courageous, trusting actors through their paces at such breakneck speed that one must wonder whether they go home and sleep until showtime the following night. Colantoni, adept at instant twists and turns of emotion, is especially memorable as he reads one of Russell's stories about Cream Puff the Friendly Cloud, whose best buddy, Cutie Pie the Curious Cocker Spaniel, dies a horrible death in a tar pit.

Act One features only two-person confrontations between these bizarre and likeable family members, but when the four find themselves together in Harriet's home for the Act Two ("Did you bring any polo shirts, Brenda," asks Russell, "or any other weapons?") the fur begins to fly--and we're not talking about Cutie Pie's. It begins with Wanda and Harriet discussing The Wonders of the Barnyard on the National Geographic Channel and coming to the conclusion that the solution for Harriet's agoraphobia might be that everyone should just stay home; it ends with a frantic, sweaty, outrageously farcical concluding scene with all three older relatives trying to decide who's out to kill whom.

This is a welcome world premiere by a fresh, new playwright--a guy who, to paraphrase his own script, gives us all a piece of his mind that we'll never want to return.

-Travis Michael Holder

 


Friday, February 20, 2004

A surreal portrait of two suburban households fractured by neuroses and consumerism, "Pigs & Bugs" at the McCadden Place Theatre sports some first-rate comic performances--but the cast has its work cut out extracting the consequential from the pretentious in Paul Zimmerman's erratic script.

In Chris Field's focused staging, the piece gets off to a paranoid ranting of Russell (Enrico Colantoni of TV's "Just Shoot Me"), a mediocre children's book author who imagines enemies are out to kill him becuase of the subversive nature of his work.

Defeated by the complexities of buying a polo shirt in today's over-hyped retail environment, Russell browbeats his long-suffering wife, Wanda (Tara Karsian) into shopping for him. Colantoni's delivery employs the manipulative macho cadences of David Mamet dialogue--until he caves in under Karsian's well-timed withering retorts.

Equally contentious hysterics erupt in the home of Wanda's agoraphobic sister, Harriet (a superb Christine Estabrook), who, in a delightfully wacky argument, talks herself into feeling good about her intent to attend support group meetings even though she remains housebound. Faced with the prospect of her daughter (Anna Perilo) leaving for college, Harriet piles on the gulit ("I'll just muddle through the way I did when your father left".) No wonder the girl encourages her uncle Russell to kill her mom, while Wanda prods Harriet to rid her of Russell.

Unfortunately, the ensuing antics increasingly indulge in eccentricity for its own sake. Just because behavior is peculiar doesn't make it meaningful.

-Philip Brandes

Back to the archives