“Tattered Capes” — It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s an Awful Lot of Fun!

By Ernest Kearney — Tattered Capes by Gregory Crafts is like a Graphic Novel for the serious Graphic Novel reader.   It starts at the fifth anniversary dinner of Kevin (Travis Joe Dixon) and Stephanie (Joanna Mercedes).   However, there’s trouble. Kevin, unbeknownst to Stephanie, is M-Pulse, a Metro City superhero who is fretful about sacrificing his patrol of the city for a date-night.

But when the couple is attacked by zombies of the undead, Kevin is treated to the most unexpected of discoveries, that his wife is Star Child, a member of Metro City’s league of premier caped defenders known as The Five: super genius The Owl (Courtney King), the pompous alien Maximus (Tanner Risner), the magical Lady Voodoo (Ann Hurd) and Jonathan (Chris Clabaugh) who’s super human fast like Flash, Zoom and Quicksilver but is having trouble with his name due to copyright issues.

Crafts’ script is full of side winks to the comic book junkies in the audience but winks aside, there is the more serious question of honesty in relationships that is being examined here, and the secret identities we keep from those we love.

The cast is… well super, especially Dixon and Mercedes as the couple who love each other if not their alter-egos.

On the product ion side, Denise Barrett has done an excellent job in costuming the caped defenders.

Also praise to Director Corey Lynn Howe who skillfully provides the pacing and innovation to Crafts’ intelligent Fringe Award-Gold Medal-The TVolutionand probing script which allows the whole production to leap a tall building in a single bound.

GOLD MEDAL


         

Tattered Capes

playing during

Hollywood Fringe Festival 2019

at

studio/stage (Main Space)
520 N. Western Ave

For Complete Show Information Go To: http://hff19.org/6076

 

For Events, Plays and Other Fun Fringe News and Info: https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/


Written by

An award-winning L.A. playwright and rabble-rouser of note who has hoisted glasses with Orson Welles, been arrested on three continents and once beat up Charlie Manson. His first play, "Among the Vipers" was a semi-finalist in the Julie Harris Playwriting Competition and was featured in the Carnegie-Mellon Showcase of New Plays. It was produced at the NPT Theater in Ashland, Oregon and Los Angeles’ celebrated Odyssey Ensemble Theatre. His following play, “The Little Boy Who Loved Monsters” was produced at The Hollywood Actors Theater, where he earned praise from the Los Angeles Times for his “…inordinately creative writing.” The play went on to numerous other productions including Berlin’s The Black Theatre under the direction of Rainer Fassbinder who wrote in his program notes of Kearney, “He is a skilled playwright, but more importantly he is a dangerous one.” Ernest Kearney has worked as literary manager or as dramaturge for among others The Hudson Theater Guild, Nova Diem and the Odyssey Ensemble Theatre, where he still serves on the play selection committee. He has been the recipient of two Dramalogue Awards and a finalist or semi-finalist, three times, in the Julie Harris Playwriting Competition. His work has been performed by Michael Dunn, Sandra Tsing Loh, Jack Colvin and Billy Bob Thornton, and to date, either as playwright or director, he has upwards of a hundred and thirty productions under his belt, including a few at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater as puppeteer. Kearney remains focused on his writing, as well as living happily ever after with his lovely wife Marlene. His stage reviews and social essays can be found at TheTVolution.com and workingauthor.com. Follow him on Facebook.

Latest comment
  • I don’t live in L.A., but I’d love to see some of these plays–especially this one. Does anyone ever record them? I’d pay…

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