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A CurtainUp Los Angeles Review
Some Girl(s)
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Is that what you're doing? Going around to all your fuckups and trying to make them better? — Tyler
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review continues below
Guy has made a career of loving and leaving and, though he says this "cruise" as one girl sarcastically describes it, is to make amends and get to know himself, we learn at the end that he has a darker reason. His girls are all food but whether appetizer, entrée or dessert, the nourishment provided is of a very superficial nature and the end result depressingly the same. "Like vomit?" queries one girl.
LaBute's dialogue is, as always, astute and acerbic, with keenly drawn female characters. To this user-loser these four different women are all the same. There's Sam, the high school sweetheart he dumped just before prom night, played by Paula Cale Lisbe whose mannerisms imply she's never gotten over being a high school girl. In graduate school he finds his loosest relationship with the artistic Tyler, brought to delicious playful life by Justina Machado. His first teaching job finds him taking on the Dean's wife Lindsay, an older beauty whose shattered dignity is sustained by her husband's love in a bitter and chilling performance by Rosalind Chao. And finally there's his supposed true love Bobbi, as vapidly model-centric as her name, who gets a dimensionless reading from Jaime Ray Newman.
Under LaBute's deftly paced direction, Feurerstein plays the Guy with buff engagingness that would be childishly endearing if it weren't so blinkered and if enlightenment wasn't, in his case, only a four-syllable word that would look good in The New Yorker. The first two women, Sam and Tyler, retain the youthful personas in which Guy first met them. The last two, Lindsay and Bobbi, see through him and even come up with versions of revenge that Guy doesn't really understand.
Sybil Wickersheimer rotates the pictures and accessories in her generic hotel room to reflect four different cities, making the point that the rooms, like Guy's perceptions of women, are pretty much the same everywhere.
To read reviews of previous productions of this play with different directors and casts: Some Girls-London
Some Girls-Off-Brpadway
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SOME GIRL(S) Playwright/Director: Neil LaBute Cast: Guy (Mark Feuerstein), Sam (Paula Cale Lisbe), Tyler (Justina Machado), Lindsay (Rosalind Chao), Bobbi (Jaime Ray Newman) Set Design: Sybil Wickersheimer Lighting Design: Kristie Roldan Costume Design: Lynnette Meyer Sound Design: Cricket S. Myers Running Time: One hour 50 minutes, no intermission Running Dates: February 6-March 9, 2008 Where: Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater, The Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Avenue, Westwood, Reservations:(310) 208-5454 Reviewed by Laura Hitchcock on February 7.. |
Easy-on-the budget super gift for yourself and your musical loving friends. Tons of gorgeous pictures.
Leonard Maltin's 2007 Movie Guide
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