By Tracey Paleo, Gia On The Move
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I have to admit, I was more than a little confused.
There is plenty of onstage masturbating, politics, ranting, screaming, dissing, spousal browbeating, murder, misogyny, borderline sexual violence, scumbag behavior, and all-around mayhem – not counting the weather. Apparently, Los Angeles is so flooded that half of the Hollywood sign is underwater. (Well, that’s neat…). Oh, and let’s not forget, children’s poetry – about Hitler.
So, I suppose there’s something for everyone to enjoy in LOFT Ensemble’s little bit of everything soup of a play, TRY NOT TO THINK ABOUT IT, ALICE CHILDRESS, about a bunch of people showing up to a remote house in the Hollywood Hills on the night of a storm, written and directed by Chris Hass. I mean, the three guys who encircled me in the back rows of the theater cackled at every disturbing joke during this extensively long performance, plus intermission.
There was a sixties vibe about the piece that offhandedly almost references Blake Edward’s 1968 comedy film, “The Party”. And the sort of hilarious, nonstop lunacy that the play offers is sometimes – but should much more regularly – be funny. As it turns out though, sitting through more than two hours of actor “gym” is a lot to ask of a paying audience.
TRY NOT TO THINK ABOUT IT, ALICE CHILDRESS feels almost entirely like an inside joke. Rather than a mainstage creation, it plays awfully like a piece you’d expect at the Hollywood Fringe; a series of spectacles strung together from a writer’s room scene study meant to cast as many company members as possible, thoroughly celebrating its triumph in making no sense whatsoever – existential or otherwise. The production could do with a broader comedic perspective than Hass the playwright who seconds as his own director, has to offer, in this case.
The truth is, with all that was happening, I just couldn’t figure out what they were going for. And I couldn’t figure out why this play.
I’m not here to settle definitions. When we’re talking theater and performance art, everything is on the table. All people, places, and circumstances are game. LOFT’s new production wasn’t necessarily bad. Nor was it good. It just wasn’t discernably anything at all.
