LA Review: 'Brilliant Traces'80 West Productions at the Lounge Theatre 2
Reviewed by
Travis Michael Holder
February 20, 2012
Henry's self-imposed seclusion is interrupted by a nearly frozen, wildly shrieking stranger (Tessa Ferrer), who, as he sleeps, slams through his door in a tattered wedding dress looking like the lone survivor in the last reel of an original movie on the Syfy Channel. Henry remains speechless on his bed as Tessa spews out an incoherent story of her unexpected arrival. "Life leaves shreds of me to come back for later," she wails as he peeks out from under a mound of blankets. After a two-day sleep (interpreted in a series of overly long filmic montage blackouts), Tessa wakes. Utilizing their one trait in common, a painful lack of socialization skills, the two try to figure out how she got there and how long, considering the white-out conditions outside, she must stay. Under John Hindman's starkly muscular direction, Wagner and Ferrer take on what in lesser hands could be an impossibly didactic script and characters extremely hard to care about, bringing an uncanny depth to this pair of badly mismatched outsiders. Although Ferrer works a bit too hard at first in her effort to introduce the audience to Tessa, she soon settles into a wonderfully rich, intellectually intricate performance. Wagner meets this challenge with a palpable fearlessness, creating a guy who is simultaneously heartrending and just a little scary. Two-character plays about lonely people who find themselves unexpectedly in each other's company are not exactly new. Nevertheless, Johnson's poetic, often gossamer dialogue, Hindman's steady guidance, and two startlingly simple but affecting performances lift this diamond-in-the-rough and give it depth and brilliance. Presented by 80 West Productions at the Lounge Theatre 2, 6201 Santa Monica Blvd., L.A. Feb. 3–March 11. Fri. and Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2:30 p.m. (323) 960-7788 or www.plays411.net. |
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