For Program Five of this year's Actors Alliance Festival, the themes are love and marriage. In The "M" Word: Part I, it's wedding time for two couples, one gay and the other lesbian. Throughout this intense drama, with comic turns, we see the reaction of various family and friends. Each actor adeptly takes on additional characters besides being in the wedding party.
Terrence McNally's Botticelli, directed by Terry Glaser, stars Landon Vaughn and Jeff Wells as two soldiers in Viet Nam waiting at a tunnel entrance for a Viet Cong soldier (Puay Kua). To while away the time the play a game, one GI trying to guess the name of a classical personage the other has thought of. Great head game in a time of great tension. They talk about loves lost and loves yet to be conquered. A joint helps ease the tension until the alleged Viet Cong emerges.
Playwright Terry Trainor reminds us of last October's events in L.A. with Firestorm, which he also directed. Gerard Maxwell plays a survivor, who lost everything including his wife. Sounds somber? Not really, for his character is a new person as a result of watching the fire from his neighbor's pool. The transition will surely amuse.
The Worley family brings us Genealogy, with Don writing and Tricia directing. "Genealogy" stars Teri Lehner and Diana Wills Edwards as a lesbian couple who want a baby of their own. They enlist Larry Parker, playing one of the girls' uncle, to donate sperm. Of course, he doesn't tell his wife and lawyer, played by Kathy Hardman. Add to the mix Patricia DiMeo as an eccentric grandmother and, in a final court scene, Steve Harris as a judge. "Genealogy" is a sure-fire audience pleaser with laughter echoing in the Lyceum Space.
The "M" Word: Part II book-ends program five. This time it's a hearing for the Marriage Amendment under the second Bush administration (large audience response) in 2007. Priscilla Allen is a California Senator holding hearings to ratify the bill in San Diego with Todd Blakesley as a supporter of the bill. They call various witnesses, all of whom favor the bill, and we are forced to listen to their arguments. Although there is a call for opposition voices, none appear. Then, out of the audience several young people (age 10, 14, 20 -- not cast members) speak their mind. Finally, Todd, as the bill's proponent, calls for the audience to align themselves for or against the bill. Almost all of the audience went to the stage.
All the plays in Program Five offer a great contrast, some excellent characterizations, and a chance for real controversy.
