Pacific Resident Theatre
Venice, Calif.
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The emotional power of Vince Melocchi’s “gracefully melancholic” new drama sneaks up on you, said Les Spindle in Backstage. Though it begins as a simple story about an old man returning to his small Pennsylvania hometown, it grows into a “telling and compassionate portrait” of aging, regret, and the devastating effects of Alzheimer’s disease. Lou, its frail protagonist, arrives in town seeking “a reunion with his teenage sweetheart.” She first appears in a flashback to 1951, when the two shared a sweet but “awkward rooftop encounter.” But when he eventually finds her in a local nursing home, she is a shadow of her former self, so ravaged by dementia that she cannot recognize members of her own family.
This “small, sweet play” could so easily have turned maudlin, said Charlotte Stoudt in the Los Angeles Times. Fortunately, director Guillermo Cienfuegos uses a dash of good humor to temper the play’s somber events, and the show “has the low-key feel of real life.” One of the strengths of the script is its wealth of conversations “that at first appear pointless” before revealing deep shadings of character, said Paul Birchall in LA Weekly. The players, led by Richard Fancy and Roses Pritchard, supply admirably nuanced performances. Their work helps endow this “unusually believable” tragedy with a “feeling of reality” that’s positively haunting.
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