Mission of Flowers

Theatre Asylum as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival

Reviewed by Steven Leigh Morris, L.A. Weekly

June 22, 2010


Australian actor Leof Kingsford-Smith's solo performance of Gerry Greenland's biographical drama is based on the life and diary of English-Australian aviator Bill Lancaster. Alan Walpole's set creates a kind of art carved from the imagined wreckage of Lancaster's plane, which crashed in the Sahara in 1933. And there's that image of water once more as the essence of what we are. Lancaster sits preserving energy, and crossing off chalk lines on a water canteen as day after day tick by, with flickering and then fading hope that his flares will be noticed by nearby pilots. The play is a fever dream as Lancaster awaits rescue. For a fever, however, it sure is a straightforward and rational account of the guy's memories, including his affair with a flame—female aviator Chubby Miller—for whom Lancaster divorced his wife. A mutual American friend then struck up a romance with Chubby, and issues of betrayal, murder and/or suicide percolate. Kingsford-Smith gives a tenderly rendered portrayal of haughty adventurer who runs out of adventures, under Damien Lay's direction. When he smacks his lips, you can feel that blistering Sahara heat.

Theatre Asylum, 6320 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; thru June 27. www.hollywoodfringe.org/project/view/106.
 
 
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