By Ernest Kearney — Rebecca O’Brien runs for a bus. Projected on the back wall of the Hudson Theatre is the photo of a bus stop familiar to any of us who have ridden the 217 down Fairfax Avenue.
Thus the audience is enticed into O’Brien’s tale of surviving cancer. What is unique, one could say wonderfully unique, about O’Brien’s take on this sadly too familiar story is that cancer itself isn’t a character in her play. It isn’t even afforded a cameo role. In fact, it’s barely atmosphere.
Front stage and center is a celebration of surviving and the cavalcade of Dickensian characters to whom O’Brien credits a portion of her survival.
Between 2016 and 2019, O’Brien traveled the 217 bus to her treatment appointments with Stella, her small service dog, usually sleeping snugly in her purse. Getting There! is a compendium of the individuals she shared those rides with, or as O’Brien calls them “The strangers who had my back.”
Getting There! is unique in two aspects. First is O’Brien’s writing which is executed with a briefness and a beauty that echoes Haiku poetry. I am hard-pressed to recall a solo show with less language that has said so much.
Based on notes O’Brien jotted down in waiting rooms after arriving for her treatments each episode reflects the succinctness of that time restraint but enhanced with a clarity of vision bestowed by the proximity of one’s mortality.
The other aspect this show possesses is O’Brien herself, an actress of justly esteemed talent. A single line of dialogue a slight adjustment of the shoulders, and suddenly you have a fully formed character on stage before you.
What you are given here is a painfully joyous honest observation of the courage of a found community crushing cancer under its communal heel and the unspoken reminder that in the end, we all rely on the kindness of strangers.
The first Platinum Medal of HFF23!
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Getting There! is running during the Hollywood Fringe Festival 2023
at the
Hudson Theatre (Hudson Guild) in Hollywood.
For Hollywood Fringe Festival Details, Getting There! Show Information and Tickets Click HERE.
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