L.A. Review: '6 Characters Looking for an Author'

Absurdist playwright Luigi Pirandello is said to have shocked Italian audiences in the 1920s with "Six Characters in Search of an Author," his complicated meta-play that evolves from farce to philosophy in a few short acts. Unfortunately, the Promenade Players Theatre Company, in its overly ambitious attempt to interpret the work, leaves the audience not astonished but befuddled.

What the Promenade Players advertises as a "new" version of the play, by David Harrower, has actually been around for a decade and is only imperceptibly altered from the 1922 translation. The plot remains the same: A director and his actors are onstage rehearsing a play when a group of unfinished "characters" burst in requesting that the tale of their family be staged. Their story revolves around a man whose wife left him and had a second, illegitimate family with another man. Many years later, the man encounters his estranged wife's daughter working as a prostitute, and the family drama escalates from there. As the "characters" tell their tale, the "director" and "actors" try to decide how to make this story into a play, all the while commenting on what theater, acting, characters, and storytelling really mean.

The moment the "characters" arrive, the production loses its way. Their entrance elicits neither amazement nor alarm from the fictional director and actors onstage, so anyone unfamiliar with the play could easily miss the significance of their arrival.

Because some members of the cast are "characters" while others are "actors," there needs to be something in the performances to help the audience understand who's who. In this case, the actors themselves don't even seem to know. The Father (Ralph Radebaugh at the performance I attended) and the Step Daughter (Caileigh Scott), who carry most of the play's action, have so little confidence in their roles that they can't believably convince their fictional director of who they are, and the audience doesn't buy it either. Aside from Alain Washnevsky, who makes a good effort to assert some authority as the Director (he alternates in the role with Vincent Lappas), the other actors don't fare much better. The awkwardness onstage is only heightened when lines are cut off or forgotten.

Because this production eliminates the young boy and girl characters (leaving only four characters in search of an author) but continues to refer to them, things become even more confusing. When the two children are finally needed onstage, two poor audience members are subjected to the embarrassment of having to fill in.

Director Douglas Matranga's staging, with actors sometimes standing in clumps, sometimes aimlessly pacing, and sometimes addressing the audience without reason, does little to alleviate the sense of uncertainty onstage.

The only cast members who seem sure of what they're doing are those who aren't acting—the show's actual stage manager (Danette Garrelts) and technical director (Vincent Lappas), who appear onstage to double as the technicians of the fictional show.

As a result of insecure acting and disoriented direction, the audience chuckles uncomfortably at the play's serious moments but not at its real jokes. "6 Characters" is meant to offer a thought-provoking challenge, but this production yields only bewilderment. The Promenade Players, in this case, has taken on far more than it can handle. 

Presented by the Promenade Players Theatre Company at the Promenade Playhouse, 1404 Third Street Promenade, Santa Monica. June 15–July 21. Fri. and Sat., 8 p.m. (310) 656-8070 or www.promenadeplayhouse.com.