Valley Theatre delivers a confusing performance

An ambitious attempt at Lanford Wilson’s difficult play.

By: Gabriel Gomez, Copy Editor 

During the third week of November, in the dreadfully compact Emerson Theater on Lankershim Boulevard – a room no larger than 950 square feet, composed of a simple stage set and three steep rows of 12 audience seats, which the gentleman sitting next to me described as “so intimate” – Valley’s theatre department gave an interesting performance of Lanford Wilson’s “The Rimers of Elderitch.”  

The play started with the heckling-commentary and gossip of two older women of the town – played by Molly Williams and Lillie Granger – which reminded one of the whimsy of Statler and Waldorf. This received worthy admiration from the audience, and laughs could be heard all around. Unfortunately, things declined from this solid start. 

Many of the actors delivered quite impressive performances, including Mya Weber as Patsy Johnson, Miguel Dorado as Walter, and Samantha Kiel as Nelly Windrod. However, the star of the show was Cole Lovejoy, playing the unsettling and buffoonish “Skelly Mannor.” His demeanor reminded one of Nicolas Cage as “Longlegs,” though less intelligent and more like a drunkard with a wet brain. Lovejoy’s repeated shouts of “god-damn son of a bitch!” were very funny and worked to portray his character excellently. 

Trying to follow along was an arduous and difficult task; yet, I don't believe this is necessarily the fault of the actors. The complex plot and its non-linearness created a confused and incoherent mass of fragmented scenes that did not fuse together in an understandable way. It felt like Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” in its narrative structure and strange, feverish Southern-Gothic style, yet without any of the integration of its disparate parts. 

All 17 actors were almost always on the stage throughout the entirety of the play, which created a feeling of confusion and the sense that too much was going on at once. A recurring issue throughout was the secondary characters' audible and distracting whispers; their mumble track was almost as loud as the dialogue being performed by the characters the audience was meant to hear. These – and some more, such as the overly dramatic shouts and howls that were to the point of gaudiness – were glaring and unfortunate problems with the performance, for they could have been easily fixed. 

Overall, the play was a bit too big for the cast and that they would have been better served had its director chosen a more within-reach play that emphasized a simple narrative and dialogue structure that could have allowed the students to let their real and admirable talent shine in the most clear and effective way possible.