Theater: DURANG!: FOUR ONE-ACT PLAYS (Live and Streaming from The Hollywood Fringe Festival 2021)

DURANG TIMES FOUR

Coming to the Hollywood Fringe Festival soon is Durang!, performed by a fun and diverse cast of 12 local L.A. actors, consists of four wild and hilarious one-act plays written by the incomparable Christopher Durang, writer of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Beyond Therapy, and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You.

For Whom The Southern Belle Tolls: In this parody of The Glass Menagerie, the fading Southern belle, Amanda, tries to prepare her hyper-sensitive, hypochondriacal son, Lawrence, for “the feminine caller.” Terrified of people, Lawrence plays with his collection of glass cocktail stirrers. Ginny, the feminine caller, is hard of hearing and overbearingly friendly. Brother Tom wants to go the movies, where he keeps meeting sailors who need to be put up in his room. Amanda tries to face everything with “charm and vivacity,” but sometimes she just wants to hit somebody.

’Dentity Crisis: Recovering from a nervous breakdown, Jane is nursed and nagged by her relentlessly cheerful mother, and confused by her oversexed brother — who keeps changing into her father, her grandfather and her mother’s French lover. Eventually all (including Jane’s psychiatrist, who undergoes a sex change operation and swaps places with his wife) change characters again and become Jane herself — leaving her with no identity at all and pointing up the near impossibility of self-identification in our uncertain times.

Wanda’s Visit: Jim and Marsha have been married for thirteen years and are feeling a little bored and unhappy. Wanda, Jim’s old girlfriend, shows up for a visit and becomes the guest from hell. Out one night for dinner, all hell breaks loose in the restaurant as a waiter tries to cope on his first day with the confused threesome.

The Actor’s Nightmare: Having casually wandered onstage, George is informed that one of the actors, Eddie, has been in an auto accident and he must replace him immediately. Apparently no one is sure of what play is being performed but George (costumed as Hamlet) seems to find himself in the middle of a scene from Private Lives, surrounded by such luminaries as Sarah Siddons, Dame Ellen Terry and Henry Irving. As he fumbles through one missed cue after another the other actors shift to Hamlet, then a play by Samuel Beckett, and then a climactic scene from what might well be A Man for All Seasons — by which time the disconcerted George has lost all sense of contact with his fellow performers. Yet, in the closing moments of the play, he rises to the occasion and finally says the right lines, whereupon make-believe suddenly gives way to reality as the executioner’s axe (meant for Sir Thomas Moore) instead sends poor George to oblivion — denying him a well-earned curtain call.

Durang! is directed by Kristin Towers-Rowles. The cast features (in alphabetical order) Michelle Bonebright-Carter, Megan Cochrane, James Everts, Shayna Gabrielle, Dan Lovato, Michael J. Marchak, Michael Mullen, Will Potter, Chris Ramirez, Jen Talton, Neil Unger, and Mouchette Van Helsdingen.

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Durang!
Hollywood Fringe Festival 2021
studio/stage (Main Space), 520 N. Western Ave in Hollywood
show runs 100 minutes | tickets are $12
NOTE: performances are Pacific Time

Important: For all in-person performances, you will be required to wear a mask indoors in compliance with the current LA County mandate. In addition to wearing a mask, you will need to present proof of vaccination against COVID-19 or a negative COVID-19 test (within 72 hours) along with a photo ID.