By Jesse Schmitt
As I stepped into the small black box space known as the Lounge Theatre (6201 Santa Monica Blvd Hollywood) I was immediately taken to a very at once familiar and inviting and frightening and uncomfortable place. At first I thought that perhaps the un-comfort came from the narrow rows of chairs (four and four, left and right) placed very close together through eight rows on a decidedly raked platform; the folks behind me were yelping in my ears the whole show. We were also down front which was fine until the old woman and her son started whipping the leather belt around. In hindsight though I’d been to more uncomfortable spaces and the fact remained that this was a black box so intimacy is all very well calculated and staged accordingly.
The thing, I think now, that had me most afraid was the parts that were also familiar. Plush, old pattern loveseat with a knit blanket, multi colored walls, and that little piece of something intangible (perhaps it was the shoe horn on the table) made me feel as though I were back in a home I’d been to years before; maybe an aunt or grandmother.
However this home also had a lot of stagnation inside of it. Mildew for mildews sake, a five bulb chandelier with two bulbs lit, a baseball in a baseball holder which appeared as though it hadn’t been touched in twenty years. This home made me feel very unsettled just because of it being there; this fact was not lost on me and these feelings did not go on unaddressed.
But back to the play. The press release calls “Big Baby” a “seriocomedy about a crazy Catholic mother living with her disturbed middle aged son who falls for the dominatrix next door;” if you are able to read that and picture what I did then you’ve passed and you may go home.
I’m not sure what a “seriocomedy” is supposed to be, but I don’t think that my read on this play is what the playwright was going for. The lead character and playwright (Joe Keyes) is Kile; the middle aged, conspiracy theorist, anti-religion, anti-government, mentally disturbed man who is usually afflicted with a noticeable tick when he’s talking with (yelling at) his mother June (Danielle Kennedy). He lives with mom and they bicker like a pair of ninnies over everything from their wildly differing recollections of the last forty years to their split opinion on the sexual orientation of their local priest.
That goes on for a while and I felt like I was in a jungle of drunken monkeys. None of the jokes were hitting their mark, for me, nearly as well as they were for the rest of the audience. “Maybe I’m just missing something?” I thought. I’d had this same issue at “A Tune Christmas” at first and that one ended up being great. But this is a thing I’ve noticed generally about Los Angelians or at least the theatre going set; there is an entirely different pace, tempo, set up, let’s call it patience in many of the places I’ve been thus far. People are willing to wait a lot longer for the punch line and they’re won over a lot easier than I’m accustomed to; sometimes the payoff is worth it; many times it just fizzles.
Be that as it may the very beginning of this show I thought was rude, crude, and mean. This mother and son are so totally rude to one another to the point of being offensive. While that was disturbing, there was something else nagging at me and I couldn’t figure it until I got out. I had decided it was the voice of the characters. In the beginning the mother and son are finishing each others thoughts and speaking in a sameness which sounds more to me like the rambling of a writers thinking conflicted thoughts at their typewriter (or the screaming guilty thoughts of an altar boy) rather than a writer who is using two people with different ideas and different feelings to convey a disagreement.
Enter Nancy (Chloe Taylor) their new neighbor who is introduced and promptly struck with a broom stick. The physical comedy of this show was another thing which could have been used to greater effect; much of the ‘action’ was committed offstage and we were only permitted see these folks in the living room. Nancy drags a trail of blood in and June insists she’s “Mary” (this joke has already been played out over the course of her and her sons interaction as she on numerous occasions invokes “the blessed virgin Mary”) Kile is interested but ashamed as June flogs out all the dirty laundry she’s had on her son all his life.
Rather than being repulsed, Nancy is for some reason intrigued and the three of them get into another round of like voiced characters; this time it’s “three as one.” My head was spinning and I was glad to see the scene end as all the noise was rather distressing.
Once the first scene is over (there were three scenes; the first is about half the 85 min play) the show starts to take wings. We learn that Nancy is a college student who is a dominatrix to pay the bills while she’s studying English Lit. This is a markedly different turn for June and Kile; mother would rather put on blinders (“sounds like she’s babysitting”) while son is aroused.
The acting is all good and I can’t fault any of them; they gave the lines as much as could be got; but the players seem listless; without any real passion. This speaks to the writing; I hope this show is able to go through a rewrite before they decide to stage it again. Everything in this show feels as though it’s a little too close to the chest of the playwright; he could use some objective eyes and ears to help make it more accessible.
I won’t go into detail on the remainder save to say that this play seems to end right before where it begins. We’re introduced to June and Kile on a cliff’s edge. The introduction of Nancy sends them careening and clawing and as all three push away and cling to each other for dear life. In the end though, they’re back on stable ground, but for how long?
“There’s something wrong with all of this,” says Kile just before the curtain drops, “I’m trying though; I’m trying.”
“You need to find some peace,” replies June.
If the show had ended there, I might have felt better about their prospects. But at the very last another element is thrown in which made me feel like we were watching an episode of “Three’s Company.” Jack and Janet have just unraveled one of their crazy adventures and then Chrissy comes racing in to send ironic hands up into the air and the audience laugh track on high.
I know a lot of adults live with their parents and I know that a lot of drama sometimes ensues. But is “Big Baby” real life, really?
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