By Ernest Kearney — We have seen many similar spin-types of this show, wherein one character is contemplating suicide; “Every Brilliant Thing,” “Suicide, Incorporated,” “’Night, Mother” and others.
To her credit, Elizabeth J. Musgrave has seeded some poignancy in her narrative concerning the middle-aged, depressed Laura (Mandy Denaux) who has resolved to spend her last evening in the company of a male escort (Garrett Louis) whose life it turns out is nearly as ruined as her own.
Unfortunately, Musgrave has neglected to water her seedling or assure it received the needed sunlight to take root, and what she has presented as a play is, at best, an early first draft.
Denaux and Louis struggle to establish a believable relationship between their characters, but the storyline the playwright has provided them is not much more dramatically functional than that of a spider’s web. And what some would regard as lazy writing to present Louis as a pitiable clone of Joe Buck, I’m afraid I regard as inexcusable.
Laura Marlowe is lovely as the younger sister, but the potential that is apparent in her performance is squandered in the two brief scenes that have no dramatic function beyond being bookends; likewise Andres Solorzano and Michael Moret, who are hoods. They enter like hoods, behave like hoods, and exit like hoods. Cut them or employ them. In a review of another Fringe production I’ve yet to write, I will be praising John Coppola’s direction, but not in this one.
For Denaux, Louis, and Marlowe’s valiant effort, a Bronze Medal.
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Dream Big is playing during the Hollywood Fringe Festival 2023
at the
Asylum @ Stephanie Feury Studio Theatre (SFS Theatre mainstage)in Hollywood.
For Hollywood Fringe Festival Details, Dream Big‘Show Information, and Tickets Click HERE.
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