SeaGlass Keeps Kvetching in Fine Style

Kvetch

by Steven Berkoff
directed by Ian Vogt
SeaGlass Theatre
@ Whitefire Theatre/through October 16

Steven Berkoff's abrasive, but hilariously on-target look at people who kvetch their way through life is being given a skillfully sharp production by SeaGlass Theatre, under the even direction of Ian Vogt, now onstage through October 16 at the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks.

Abrasive because it does not hold back anything, no matter how offensive. That includes four-letter words and distasteful images! Berkoff has his characters saying one thing, then freezing and next saying their innermost thoughts in contradictory reaction to the others. For example, in the first scene, Frank (Matt Kirkwood) brings home working partner Hal (Paul Stroili) to meet his dutiful wife Donna (Kimberly Van Luin) and to enjoy a nice quiet dinner. What a startling row it becomes! Frank's aging mother-in-law (Annie Abbott) is on hand. Outspoken and aggressive, she speaks her mind to the point of frazzling Frank's nerves. At one moment he jokingly dismisses her behavior, and in the next - in his fantasy - he is hacking her to death with a chainsaw. Reality and fantasy collide, and the fantasy takes control, causing eventual change and ..., as in all phases of life, as Berkoff so keenly observes ... more unhappiness. Does the kvetching ever cease? Take the issue of marriage. Are Frank and Donna really happy? Their bedroom sex scene is one hilarious mess with unexpected surprises. There's also a stern businessman George (Dale Morris), with whom Frank must negotiate. George, however, has other more lascivious business in mind, which leads to further family crises.

Dinner scenes around a dining room table (above, top) are always comically reliable, but in kvetch, that first scene may just be a tad too long for comfort. As vivid as images become, it seems like it will never end. For me, it is in the bedroom scenes where the action comes to life and where sexual fantasy supplies most of the play's best off-the-wall humor. The high point of Berkoff's writing is that he skillfully manages to extend his message from inside the family to the outside world and includes issues of backstabbing, adultery, as well as homosexuality.

The cast is terrific. Kirkwood makes Frank an engagingly bewildered, attention-craving mensch, Van Luin is consistently superb especially as she forces herself to finally shuck it all and give in to her womanly needs, funnyman Stroili as Hal gives new meaning to the phrase the ultimate neurotic, Morris makes George an almost likable scoundrel, and Abbott is appropriately cute and devilishly funny as the old lady.

What about those newspapers covering the walls of the set? (designer Scott LeGrand) What do they represent? For me, communication through journalism stands for truth. What the characters ultimately blurt out, even in fantasy, becomes the truth that will set them free.

kvetch is never easy to take - and a difficult one for the actors to pull off, but SeaGlass does it with sublime artistry, with laughs aplenty.

(too dark for kiddies, so leave them at home!)