Press

By Daryl H. Miller
Feb 09, 2018 | 6:00 AM

Orson Bean and Alley Mills in their autobiographical show “Alright Then.” (Jeff Lorch)

Steering the autobiographical stage show “Alright Then” toward its wrap-up, Orson Bean reaches toward his wife, Alley Mills, and grasps her hand as he announces that what he most wants to tell the audience about is “the miracle — and I do mean miracle — of how on earth you wound up saying yes to me.”

“Miracle” is indeed the right word because it connotes gratitude, a feeling that these showbiz veterans display throughout 80 heartwarming, soul-nurturing minutes at Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice.

Familiarity with Bean and Mills is by no means necessary to enjoy their jointly crafted show, though some YouTube research beforehand might be fun. (For him, try “The Tonight Show”; for her, “The Wonder Years.”) Nor do you need to have seen his autobiographical stage show “Safe at Home,” to which this could be considered a companion piece.

All it takes to feel as if you’ve known them forever is to experience their smiles as they enter the stage.

He’s 89, with snowy hair; she’s 22 years younger and radiantly blond. Bean acknowledges that when they’re out together, he’ll occasionally notice a passerby studying them, wondering, “How the hell did he get her?” From the happiness they radiate, however, we can see how ridiculous such preconceptions are.

Still, there is the sheer improbability on this planet of 7.6 billion people of any two people meeting and being just right for each other.

In their childhood homes, neither was provided a particularly good model for marriage. As a result, Bean was forced to grow up much too fast and Mills went through a rebellious phase. Back and forth, Bean and Mills reach into their separate histories to recall formative events, with the other helping to narrate or slipping into the scene to portray a supporting character.

For years he was haunted by a sin of omission, she by an assault. The effort of reliving these moments is visible in their bodies, but then they cast their demons aside and seem to emerge lighter on the other side — a live exorcism, of sorts.

Sadness never lasts long, though. These two much prefer jokes and funny faces, and Bean, especially, tends to burst into song.

The memorable figures who emerge are not the Hollywood stars the couple have known, but such personally important figures as Mills’ longtime nanny, who materializes before our astonished eyes as Mills channels the caregiver’s joyful rendition of “Jesus Loves Me,” punctuated by claps and stomps.

The storytelling feels spontaneous, even though it is meticulously shaped and paced under Guillermo Cienfuegos’ direction. Above all, genuineness is this show’s special magic — laughter, pecking kisses, grateful tears.

A quarter-century into their marriage, Bean and Mills are eager to show us how happy and thankful they are. Watch and learn.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
‘Alright Then’

Where: Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd., Venice
When: 8 p.m. Thursdays to Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays; ends March 25
Tickets: $25-$34
Info: (310) 822-8392, www.pacificresidenttheatre.com
Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes
daryl.miller@latimes.com

January 31, 2018 Elaine Mura Entertainment 0

Orson Bean and Alley Mills are poignantly engaging as lovers who beat the odds and find each other later in life. The autobiographical story covers the years before their meeting – and after – to charm the audience with their fresh and gentle view of a relationship that was meant to be.

Orson Bean and Alley Mills – Photo by Jeff Lorch

Directed by Guillermo Cienfuegos, the pair shine as they grow up before our eyes, each with his own set of painful and delicate memories. As Orson Bean opines, “We kept shoes on lots of kids from all the shrinks we saw over the years.” Absent, abusive, or uncaring parents, however, just seemed to make the two better able to handle stress and loss – and appreciate success all the more. Perhaps Pacific Resident Theatre artistic director Marilyn Fox’s memory of lines from J.M. Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World” summarizes it all: “It’s miracles, and that’s the truth…me there toiling a long while, and walking a long while, not knowing at all there was the like of you drawing nearer, like the stars of God.”

Orson Bean and Alley Mills in ALRIGHT THEN – Photo by Jeff Lorch

Orson Bean’s solo show, “Safe at Home, An Evening with Orson Bean,” was last year’s PRT hit and certainly encouraged this follow-up account of the special moments between Orson and his future wife, Alley Mills. These are two people who are very different – in age, education, and history – and yet they are also very much alike on an emotional level. Both achieved notice through their stand-out acting abilities – Orson by his stage, film, television, and comedic skills and Alley in television, films, and stage (including a stint with Shakespeare). By the way, Orson shares the story of how he got his name with his lucky audience.
Alley Mills and Orson Bean at the After-party – Photo by Elaine L. Mura

The play performs in Guillermo Cienfuegos’ and David Mauer’s French provincial setting which, to quote Orson Bean, is a left-over from PRT’s earlier production. Nonetheless, it somehow fits comfortably into the current romantic account. Matt Richter’s lighting and Christopher Moscatiello’s sound add depth to the play – and keep the focus where it belongs. Overall, the entire production team has managed to keep the narrative heart-warming, authentic, and incredibly moving. Even slight missteps during the performances lend an endearing quality to the play as a whole. These are people who can make mistakes in life but still keep forging ahead anyway.

ALRIGHT THEN runs through March 25, 2018, with performances at 8 p.m. on Thursdays through Saturdays and at 3 p.m. on Sundays. Pacific Resident Theatre is located at 703 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291. Tickets range from $25 to $34. For information and reservations, call 310-822-8392 or go online.

ALRIGHT THEN/by Orson Bean and Alley Mills/directed by Guillermo Cienfuegos/Pacific Resident Theatre/thru March 25, 2018

The world premiere of ALRIGHT THEN presents a sweet stroll down memory lane of married actors Orson Bean and Alley Mills. The two separate childhood stories of Bean and Mills, through their life together to the present, make up the eighty-minute one-act. Quite a lot to cover in just eighty minutes, which inexplicably include moments of TMI. These BWW Review: ALRIGHT THEN Says It All About Bean & Millsmoments, though adding to the dramatics, aren’t totally essential to the drama.

Bean and Mills’ real-life relationship translates well onstage as their ease and intimate rapport kept their narratives genuine and endearing. Theirs include easy give-and-takes, overlapping of lines, flowing responses and loving gestures and looks. They act like a couple who’s been together for over 24 years because they really are.

While both Bean and Mills ably handle the heavy dramatics of their respective defining childhood incidents, Bean seems much more alive and comfortable name-dropping fun incidents with Raul Julia, Barbra Streisand, Henry Fonda and Gene Kelly. A most natural story-teller, hard to distinguish when Bean ad libs off script or is actually reciting his (and BWW Review: ALRIGHT THEN Says It All About Bean & MillsMills) written words. Bean’s stand-alone jokes sprinkled sparingly throughout remind of what made his younger-days stand-up so successful.

Guillermo Cienfuegos directs this charismatic couple at a smooth, steady pace with whatever conflicts all ending in sweetness (and song). How generous of Pacific Resident Theatre to give set design credit to Cienfuegos and David Mauer for the RHINOCEROS set that ALRIGHT THEN currently uses. How clever of Bean to immediately address this detail with his intro song in French (as homage to the French cafe set from RHINOCEROS).

www.pacificresidenttheatre.com

“Alright Then” at Pacific Resident Theatre

Orson Bean and Alley Mills in Pacific Resident Theatre’s production of Alright Then, developed by the performers and directed by Guillermo Cienfuegos, now playing through March 11. Photos by Jeff Lorch.

Orson Bean’s career is extraordinary. Born in 1928 and baptized Dallas Frederick Burrows, he started performing as a child at home. After World War II, he became a magician, but soon morphed into a stand-up comic in the early 1950s. He acquired his unusual moniker after a nightclub piano player suggested some names that might grab an audience immediately. After a number of suggestions failed, including “Roger Duck,” the savvy keyboardist offered “Orson Bean.” The audience laughed and it has been Orson Bean ever since. He has worked steadily, year after year, on Broadway, television and film right up to the present moment. Bean’s comic timing is impeccable and his a capella singing is pitch perfect.

Teamed with his beautiful wife, Alley Mills, a star in her own right, most famously in the eight-year run of The Wonder Years, the two stars make vibrant entertainment out of their life stories in their autobiographical two-person show, Alright Then. With great good humor and high, audience pleasing hilarity, the two stars tell their individual tales from childhood to the present moment in the most intimate of ways. They sing, they joke and they recreate with precise impressions the important people in their lives. Everything is fair game for these delightfully shameless show people, including their obvious age difference; he is pushing ninety with a short stick and she is sixty-six. Their marriage has endured since 1993, and the evidence of their successful relationship is right there on stage as they hand off the story telling assignments with the smooth professionalism of the stars they are.

Orson Bean and Alley Mills in Pacific Resident Theatre’s production of Alright Then, developed by the performers and directed by Guillermo Cienfuegos, now playing through March 11. Photos by Jeff Lorch.

As I am sure there are many details that remain private, the performers reveal much about their lives, both the joys and the pains. While their childhoods were shattered by divorce, they also had moments of joy with friends and significant adults. The particulars of their professional trajectory is utterly fascinating, the details of which, readers, you will have to see and hear for yourselves. This show is a joy to experience with laughter abounding and moments of touching pathos. It is as good as it gets. Don’t miss it.

The script of Alright Then was developed by the performers and directed by Guillermo Cienfuegos. Subtle sound design by Christopher Moscatiello and lighting by Matt Richter enhance the performance. Movement and choreography is by Myrna Gawryn, and the stage is managed by Julianne Figueroa. Produced by Marilyn Fox, Sara Newman-Martins and Rachel Berney Needleman, Alright Then runs through March 25 at Pacific Resident Theatre in 703 Venice Blvd in Venice, California.

The self-imposed withdrawal of an enigmatic woman (Marwa Bernstein) provokes consternation from her clueless lover (Matt Letscher) in “Cigarettes and Chocolate” at Pacific Resident Theatre. (​​​​​​​Vitor Martins)
Philip Brandes

Although the late Anthony Minghella is remembered primarily for his film direction and screenplays (“The English Patient,” “Cold Mountain”), he also had a deep affinity with the intimate theatrical traditions of character-based drama.

Pacific Resident Theatre offers a rare opportunity to appreciate Minghella’s playwriting prowess with a pair of little-known, one-act radio plays — “Cigarettes and Chocolate” and “Hang Up” — first broadcast over the BBC in the 1980s.
Honoring their origin as works intended to be heard, director Michael Peretzian (Minghella’s longtime friend and U.S. agent) employs an appropriately minimalist “staged reading” presentation, equipping the actors with little more than scripts on music stands and occasional ambient sound cues.

Set amid the Ronald Reagan-Margaret Thatcher unfettered-free-market era, Minghella’s sharply observed portraits of self-indulgent young London urbanites bristle with quirky humanity, mordant wit and deep insight into everyday experience — closer in spirit to Minghella’s breakout film, “Truly, Madly, Deeply,” than to his later cinematic blockbusters.

No-frills production values notwithstanding, Peretzian and his first-rate ensemble of Pacific Resident company veterans render Minghella’s precisely inflected dialogue with polished authority — particularly when it comes to the failures of communication that figure prominently in both pieces.

“Hang Up,” the shorter, more narrowly focused lead-in, depicts a faltering telephone conversation between a suspicious lover (Michael Balsley) and his girlfriend (Jeanette Driver, filling in for Molly Schaffer) as their relationship disintegrates in lack of trust.

“Cigarettes and Chocolate” depicts the confusion that results when a sociable young woman (Marwa Bernstein) abruptly decides to stop speaking or responding to others. As the people close to her speculate obsessively about the reason for her silence, their bewildered guesses run a dizzying tonal gamut: Her appallingly caddish lover (Matt Letscher) thinks she discovered he’s been cheating on her with their married friend (Ursula Brooks); her amusing chatterbox bestie (Tania Getty) attributes the withdrawal to envy of her own impending childbirth; a milquetoast (Jaxon Duff Gwillim) with a crush pathetically backpedals from the love letter he thinks drove her away.

Their explanations share an insistence on making her decision all about themselves. When the woman’s hauntingly poetic internal monologue links her release from the weight of words to social conscience, it’s an inconceivable notion for them. Besides the fine performances, the striking thing about these plays is their prescient diagnosis of a peculiarly modern type of narcissism born in the absence of shared sacrifice, with no sense of being part of something greater than the pursuit of self-interest.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
‘Cigarettes and Chocolate’ and ‘Hang Up’

Where: Pacific Resident Theatre, 705½ Venice Blvd., Venice

Where: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays; ends Sept. 10

Tickets: $25-$34

Information: (310) 822-8392, pacificresidenttheatre.com

Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes

Jewish Journal Cover Story by Rob Eshman

Published Aug 15, 2017 / Cover Story

I spent last Saturday night — the night of the neo-Nazi rally and the tragic murder — at the Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice, watching a fine performance of Eugene Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros.” The play takes place in a French village, where the drunkard Berenger is witness to something bizarre: slowly, the townsfolk are turning into rhinos. Ionesco, whose mother was from a Sephardic Jewish family, wrote the play based on his experiences in Romania in the 1930s, when, one by one, his social circle turned on him and embraced fascist leaders and their ideologies.

I was still reeling from the astonishing fact that President Donald Trump had just equated white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the KKK with the people who took to the streets to stop them. Earlier that day, Trump refused to name and shame these people even after one of them allegedly rammed his car into a crowd of peaceful protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

What was happening onstage paralleled the world outside.

Onstage, the protagonist Berenger explains to his girlfriend, Daisy, one way the rhinos multiply.

“Sometimes one does harm without meaning to,” he says, “or rather one allows it to go unchecked.”

And when Berenger’s co-worker dismisses accounts that the streets are now filled with citizens-turned-rhinos, Berenger shows him the morning headlines.

“I never believe journalists,” Botard says. “They’re all liars. I don’t need them to tell me what to think; I believe what I see with my own eyes.”

The audience didn’t know whether to clap, laugh or groan — I heard all three.

By the end of the play, all the townsfolk but Berenger become rhinos. Some because that’s what they want. Some because the radio is broadcasting nothing but rhino messages. Some because everyone else is. What appeared grotesque in Act 1 seems perfectly normal by Act 3.

“We must adapt ourselves and try and get on with them,” Daisy says when only she and Berenger are left unchanged. “After all, perhaps it is we who need saving. Perhaps we are the abnormal ones.”

It was no accident the PRT chose to mount Ionesco’s 1959 classic. In his recent treatise “On Tyranny,” historian Timothy Snyder uses the play as his proof text of how democratic societies go dark.

“Ionesco’s aim was to help us see just how bizarre propaganda actually is, but how normal it seems to those who yield to it,” Snyder writes. “By using the absurd image of the rhinoceros, Ionesco was trying to shock people into noticing the strangeness of what was actually happening. The Rhinoceri are roaming through our neurological savannahs. … And now, as then, many people confused faith in a hugely flawed leader with the truth about the world we all share. Post-truth is pre-fascism.”

When the play originally came out, it was a sensation in Israel — a country whose populace was still reeling from a European outbreak of “rhinoceritis.” Soon, there was even a Hebrew word, hitcarnfut, from the root for “horn,” to describe someone who falls under the spell of any beastly ism. The Jews figured there needed to be a word for it, since what are the odds it wouldn’t happen again?

After the cast took a much-deserved curtain call, I went home and stared at the images of the neo-Nazis who marched and killed in Charlottesville. It made what the president said – and kept saying— even less excusable.

It was a march organized by a nationwide group of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, America Firsters and Confederate throwbacks that spurred the violence in the first place. They converged on Charlottesville sporting swastikas and swaddled in Confederate flags, emblazoned with the latest in 1930s Fascist emblems. They carried semi-automatic weapons and sported militia costumes. Their ostensible cause was to protest the long-planned transfer of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a town square to a town park.

The marchers alternated chants of, “You will not replace us!” with “Jews will not replace us!” They intimidated Jewish reporters and chanted the Nazi straight-outta-Nuremberg slogan “Blood and Soil!” One of the flyers that brought out the crowds featured a “Unite the Right!” slogan and a Star of David.

When counterprotesters came out to thwart them, things got ugly. Maybe it would have been cleaner had the counterprotesters stood by and waited for the wannabes to pass, but Jews tried that in the 1930s and it didn’t work out so well. That fact alone gave the president a perfect opportunity to pick sides: either the guys with swastikas and Nazi slogans and guns, or the people standing up to them.

In the immediate aftermath, Trump refused to choose.

After waiting far too long, he made a statement. He condemned violence “on many sides.” If it wasn’t clear that he was apportioning blame equally between the people who marched in support of slavery and killing Jews and those who opposed them, he repeated that phrase, “on many sides.”

Trump — the father and grandfather and father-in-law of Jews — refused to blame the neo-Nazis.

“I’m here to spread ideas, talk, in the hopes that someone more capable will come along,” rally co-organizer Christopher Cantwell told VICE News, “somebody like Donald Trump who does not give his daughter to a Jew…. I don’t think you can feel about race the way I do, and watch that Kushner bastard walk around with that beautiful girl.”

These were the people Donald Trump, best friend of the Jews, refused to hold accountable. Refused to threaten them with anywhere near the fire and fury he uses to lash out at North Korea, James Comey, Sen. Mitch McConnell, CNN or The New York Times.

It was no less than a betrayal.

I’ve disagreed with other presidents, Democrats and Republicans. I’ve protested their policies. But I never felt that any of them betrayed me. This wasn’t a close call. It was lob across home plate, which in this case stands for human decency and patriotism.

But Trump couldn’t do it.

Instead of slapping back the instigators of all this violence, my president gave them cover to go on. The protestors were able to tell themselves, “We’re no worse than them — even the president said so.” In one statement after another, Trump leveled the playing field between good and evil.

It was a missed opportunity. The movement, such as it is, is still miniscule. There weren’t that many of them — maybe 1,000? The amount of media attention they sucked up was far out of proportion to their importance or danger. That same weekend, nine people were killed and 30 others were wounded in shootings across Chicago. Zero national coverage.

But that even made the president’s task more important. Calm the country, call out these miscreants for what they are, and focus our attention on more pressing matters. This was the time to brush them back, to rally the better angels before things get out of hand.

The reaction to Trump’s shameful statement was swift and bipartisan.

Republican Sen. John McCain tweeted, “White supremacists aren’t patriots, they’re traitors — Americans must unite against hatred & bigotry.” Republican Sen. Ted Cruz called for a federal hate crime prosecution.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, whose founder Rabbi Marvin Hier gave a benediction at Trump’s inauguration, said in a statement, “We call upon all American leaders, whatever their political affiliations, led by President Trump, to specifically condemn the extreme alt-right and white nationalists who sow seeds of hate, distrust and violence.”

“”When I was a kid,” the actor Joshua Malina tweeted, “the Nazis were the bad guys.”

For years, Trump and his supporters accused President Barack Obama of refusing to use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.” Although Obama repeatedly condemned the terrorists — and put a bullet through the head of their leader, Osama bin Laden — he opened himself to the entirely valid criticism that by not naming the problem, you avoid the problem.

But here Trump was doing the exact same thing, refusing to name and condemn the terrorists in his own backyard.

Forty-eight hours after his first statement, Trump read off his second. The headline in The New York Times — two full days after Charlottesville — read, “Trump, Bowing to Pressure, Rebukes White Supremacists.”

I read it twice. It’s 2017. And everything you need to know about what’s sideways about America is between those two commas: “Bowing to pressure.”

What does it say about the president of the United States of America that getting him to name and shame white supremacists is like getting him to say “uncle?”

“Racism is evil,” President Trump read from his TelePrompTer from the White House, “and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists, and other hate groups who are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”

It was better, like any do-over. But the white supremacists on the internet said he was doing it just to calm the critics or to kowtow to them.

“He said EVERYONE INVOLVED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. that includes Antifa and BLM,” one pro-Trump Reddit user wrote, referring to anti-fascists and Back Lives Matter.

“By ‘other hate groups,’ ” wrote someone on the neo-Nazi Stormfront site, “he means the real hate groups in America, the Anti-White ones.”

This was something the neo-Nazis and the rest of humanity agreed upon: Trump’s second statement was for show, the first for real.

John Podhoretz, writing in Commentary, ventured a guess as to why. These same protesters, he said, represented the solid core or Trump’s supporters, the people who gave him the initial oomph in his race for president.

And that core, Podhoretz wrote, “is governed by rage, hatred, a sense of being wronged, and the loathing of others due to race and national origin. They are numerically insignificant to a man who secured 63 million votes in November 2016. But he … seems to feel they are necessary to the constitution of his core. And he basically let them off with a mild warning.”

They are young — the murder suspect himself was just 20 years old. Their world is a digital echo chamber. On Facebook and Reddit, their posts and comments are a Freudian playground of thwarted desire and sexual insecurity. Everyone not them is “gay” or a “faggot” or “cuck,” the alt-right put-down meaning cuckold. In their sexual obsession, their need for belonging and their delusions of Jewish dominance, these young men are not so different from the lost, horny and hate-filled ISIS fighters they must despise.

And why the Jews? How did we get dragged into a dispute over Robert E. Lee? Yes, Charlotteville Mayor Michael Signer, who stood up to the mob and showed the president what leadership looks like, happens to be Jewish. But that’s a coincidence; the obsession predates him. In fact, it’s astonishing that no matter how the leaders of the alt-right try to pretty up the movement, its true, ugly credo wills out. It’s the Jews’ fault.

A day after the violence, far-right talk radio lunatic Alex Jones claimed that the right-wing protesters who caused the violence were actually “Jewish actors,” who infiltrated the ranks to make the movement look bad.

“Nothing against Jews in general,” Jones said, “ but there are leftist Jews that want to create this clash and they go dress up as Nazis. I have footage in Austin … where it literally looks like the cast of ‘Seinfeld’ or like Howard Stern in a Nazi outfit… it’s all just meant to create the clash.”

These were the voices Trump bowed to on Tuesday, Aug. 15, when he took to the microphone again – to double down on his original equivocation.

“You had very fine people in both groups,” he said at a press conference at Trump Tower in Manhattan.

When reporters repeatedly pressed him on whether he was equating neo-Nazis and the counter-protesters, the President made it clear: he was.

“What about the alt-left that came charging at ’em – excuse me,” he said.

Was Trump on to something? No. According to an Anti-Defamation League study, of at least 372 murders that were committed by domestic extremists between 2007 and 2016, 74 percent were committed by right-wing extremists and 24 percent by Muslim extremists. Left-wing extremists? 2 percent.

Later, Trump compared Robert E. Lee, a traitor who fought to tear apart the United States that Trump is president of, with George Washington, who fought to liberate and create the country.

When it was over, KKK leader David Duke couldn’t have been happier.

“Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa,” he tweeted.

There’s no real way to explain this lunacy other than to look back. A not especially creative crowd can’t invent a new enemy, so it steals an old one.

“The rats are still down there in the sewers, brooding,” says Jean Tarrou in Albert Camus’ “The Plague,” “and the Plague is still down there with them, and that Plague will one day again send up its rats to die once more on the streets of a free city … ”

You don’t get rid of hate; you just have to be prepared, always, to fight it. It appears we now have to do battle with a feckless president. Will he ever develop a spine? Will he ever stand for the values of his party, much less America?

Or will he continue to equivocate as the plague spreads to engulf us all? Who knows? As Ionesco himself once said, “You can only predict things after they have happened.”

“Placing the emphasis on a playwright’s words and a cast’s gifts at bringing them to life, the latest from Pacific Resident Theatre proves an unexpected—and entirely unique—dramatic treat” – StageSceneLA

CIGARETTES AND CHOCOLATE & HANG UP

Matt Letscher and Marwa Bernstein star in “Cigarettes & Chocolate,” one of two one-act radio plays written by Anthony Minghella at Pacific Resident Theatre. (By Dany Margolies)

Posted: 07/30/17, 12:22 PM PDT | Updated: 4 days ago

Marwa Bernstein, foreground, with Matt Letscher in “Cigarettes & Chocolate” (Photo by Vitor Martins)

In their West Coast premieres, two one-act radio plays by Anthony Minghella grace the smaller stage at Pacific Resident Theatre. Though the two are produced as radio plays, the actors speaking from music stands, Michael Peretzian directs with enough subtext and reactions to start the audience’s imagination moving and filling in any blanks.

Minghella (writer-director of “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “The English Patient”) wrote “Hang Up” in the 1980s, when telephone technology was different but human feelings were of course the same as they are today. Minghella and Peretzian flay those feelings to reveal a couple’s innermost secrets even when the pair speaks in superficialities and lies.

She (Molly Schaffer) phones him (Michael Balsley) late at night, when he is not expecting to hear from her. Soon, the barbs come out, starting small with such topics as the music she wanted to listen to but couldn’t. She asks him to call her back, and the balance of power shifts.

He tells her he misses her. She won’t say she misses him. Undercurrents pour across the stage, from the dialogue and from the performances.

Jealousy, regret, neediness, anxiety — these appear fleetingly but cuttingly in the actors’ voices and on their faces.

She speaks of a relationship in which the man does all the talking for the deaf woman. Silence is a shield, a sword, a blessing and a burden. And it takes on a large role in the next play here, 1988’s “Cigarettes & Chocolate.”

Gemma (Marwa Bernstein) has given herself a vow of silence. This produces in her family and friends a compulsion to talk, mostly on voicemail as they leave rambling messages for her. Her silence also arouses their self-absorbed guilt, as they blame themselves for her choice.

Her partner, Rob (Matt Letscher), has had an affair with their friend Lorna (Ursula Brooks). He’s now certain this prompted Gemma’s silence.

The prissy Alistair (Jaxon Duff Gwillim) has professed his love for Gemma in an ill-advised letter, then blames the letter for her withdrawal.

Her friend Gail (Tania Getty) is in the midst of an unplanned pregnancy. Is Gemma jealous enough to refuse to speak?

Two good listeners take in the onslaught of guilt, while the talkers ignore the fact that these two also are silent, and their silence is soothing. Sample (Balsley) is Rob’s tolerant chum, Conception (Schaffer) is an Argentine psychiatrist-turned-housemaid, and they gently nod or look quizzical at all the right moments.

Did any of these people cause Gemma’s silence? Or is she mourning the lost opportunity to adopt a Vietnamese boy she spotted in Italy? Or is she mourning, or admiring, a self-immolating monk?

Gemma speaks in soliloquies, to herself and to us, in Minghella’s signature elliptical style.

Under Peretzian’s direction, the performances are evocative, clear, simple and moving. British accents, from these American actors, are thoroughly convincing.

Rebecca Kessin’s sound design adds restaurant clinks and nearby trains, helping the audience picture each setting.

Dany Margolies is a Los Angeles-based writer.
Rating: 4 stars
When: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays through Sept. 10 (no performances Aug. 4-6)
Where: Pacific Resident Theatre, 705 1/2 Venice Blvd., Venice (box office at 703 Venice Blvd.)
Tickets: $25-$34 (student rush $12)
Length: 1 hour, 45 minutes, no intermission
Suitability: Teens and adults
Information: 310-822-8392, pacificresidenttheatre.com.

“Rhinoceros”   Philip Brandes

A lone holdout (Keith Stevenson) struggles to keep civilized values alive as his neighbor (Kendrah McKay) succumbs to herd mentality. (Vitor Martins / Pacific Resident Theatre)

“It’s silly to get worked up because a few people decide to change their skins.”

So goes the excuse as easygoing provincial townsfolk spontaneously transform into the rampaging pachyderms of Eugene Ionesco’s seminal absurdist satire, “Rhinoceros.”

In the easy surrender of their very humanity lies the play’s warning about the fragility of civilized norms we take for granted, illuminated with darkly hilarious urgency in Pacific Resident Theatre superbly staged and disconcertingly timely revival.

Written in 1959 in alarmed reaction to the mid-20th century proliferation of totalitarian “isms” (fascism, communism, nationalism — name your ideological poison of choice), Ionesco’s play takes aim at their common underlying roots in the seductively corrosive lure of herd mentality.

Exemplifying that corruption, director Guillermo Cienfuegos (under his acting name Alex Fernandez), appears as Jean, the impeccably groomed, platitude-gushing epitome of cultural refinement. We first see him scolding his slovenly, alcoholic friend Bérenger (Keith Stevenson) for the latter’s antisocial failings. Jean’s eventual rhinocratic transformation — his voice, posture and mannerisms succumbing to bestial impulses — is a master class in performance all its own.

With its 17 characters and four scene changes, “Rhinoceros” is itself something of a lumbering beast, and Cienfuegos’ faithful staging proves all the more impressive in taming the play’s unrulier idiosyncrasies.

Precise comic timing and cleanly individuated characterizations sustain momentum and focus as Rhinoceritis spreads among the uniformly excellent supporting ensemble. Ionesco’s potentially deadly penchant for repetition is rendered skillfully enough to convey the intended message about conformity’s stultifying effect without inducing it in the audience.

Even the talky final scene — cycling through pseudo-logical rationalization, moral relativism and romantic illusion — benefits from Stevenson’s endearingly floundering Bérenger. Neither brilliant nor heroic, he’s nevertheless the lone holdout who suggests that the real hope of successful resistance lies in basic human decency.

The comfortably detached perspective of a stable Western democracy has afforded critics (myself included) the longtime luxury of discounting Ionesco’s pointed social commentary as comic exaggeration. While the comedy in “Rhinoceros” remains as sharp as ever, when it comes to exaggeration — nowadays, not so much.

“Rhinoceros”

Running time: 3 hours

Where: Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd., Venice

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Sept. 10.

Tickets: $25-$34

Info: (310) 822-8392 or pacificresidenttheatre.com/rhinoceros/

STAGE RAW
Pacific Resident Theater
Through September 10

RECOMMENDED

It’s difficult to imagine a timelier and more fitting play for the “Make America Great Again,” era than Eugène Ionesco’s 1959 absurdist satire. The playwright wrote it in response to the alarming ascent of fascism during the first half of the twentieth century. Despite the passage of time, it is arguably more relevant now than when it was first written.

The setting is a provincial town in France, where we first view a town square bustling with the mundane activities of its citizens. Seated at a table are Berenger (Keith Stevenson), hungover and disheveled from a night of drinking, and the painfully fastidious, immaculately attired Jean (director Guillermo Cienfuegos, appearing as Alex Fernandez), who is disgusted by Berenger’s sloppy appearance and uncultured ways, and highly vocal about it.

Then suddenly, the thunderous sounds of hoofs are heard (wonderful sound design by Christopher Moscatiello), as a rhinoceros charges through, disrupting this otherwise commonplace day by knocking over tables and chairs and sending the patrons scattering like scared rabbits. Rocked by confusion and incredulity, the citizens initially don’t quite know what to make of this happening until more rhinoceroses start popping up everywhere, and the grim truth slowly emerges: the populace of the town are exchanging their skins and succumbing, some happily like Berenger’s girlfriend Daisy (Carole Weyers), to “rhinoceritis.”

Ionesco’s play prowls the fertile terrain of allegory and symbol, and does so by turns with subtlety and blunt force, as well as engaging humor. This odd transformation runs all of three hours in three acts, and uses an array of different characters, but it is thoroughly rewarding. Cienfuegos’s staging is top-tier impressive, as are dynamic performances of the ensemble.

In the final scene, Berenger, who is now alone and surrounded by rhinos, screams, “I will not capitulate” — certainly a sentiment to ponder in these thorny, uncertain political times.

Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Boulevard, Venice, Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m., through Sept. 10 www.Pacificresidenttheatre.com/rhinoceros or (310) 822-8392. Running time: three hours with two intermissions.