Rowland’s tragicomedy is set during the Reagan era, wherein stage and big and little screen veteran Michael Rothhaar plays Harold Blackburn, an archetypal WASPy upper class Republican. Harold laments having been pushed as a young man by his domineering late father (whose portrait dominates Tom Buderwitz’s set and which lighting designer Leigh Allen highlights throughout the action) to abandon an alluring State Department career to go into the family business. After years of running this reasonably prosperous if dull company, Harold receives intimations that the reelected Ronald Reagan is considering tapping Harold to become Our Man in India. Following Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination, it’s believed that the Reagan regime requires an extremely talented diplomat to represent Washington at New Delhi.

Harold gets it into his head that he’s just the man for the job, and his youthful dreams of diplomacy and a life abroad in the Foreign Service return and reanimate him. So being a Reaganite, Harold sets out to secure his overseas sinecure by, naturally, politicking, and schemes to make a good impression on his old friend Anil (Kevin Vavasseur), who is visiting the States with his family. Harold believes this distant relation of the Gandhis is extremely influential in India, and a kingmaker vis-à-vis vetting Harold for the post he’s now yearning for.

He coerces dutiful Nora-like wife Lynn (Sara Newman-Martins) and faithful servant Woo (the droll Peter Chen) into concocting cuisine with an Indian flare in order to literally curry favor. Hippy dippy son Christopher (Justin Preston), a high (and I mean high) school student who has been, shall we say, Bogarting that joint, my friends, is imposed upon to attend the repast.

So is daughter Alexandra (the gifted Thea Rubley), who has flown home to San Francisco from her college to pursue her dream of becoming an opera singer by trying out at a hard to get into audition, which could lead to going to Italy and the launching of her singing career. Operatic music is a recurring theme in Indians; Harold is a big fan of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, the first opera Harold shared with Alexandra when she was a little
girl.

Rowland has written a clever, resonant, sly script. The stuff that dreams are made of!

Julia Fletcher ably directs this world premiere production that deserves life beyond the excellent PRT production. Burderwitz’s split-level set is imaginative as it divides the spatial and emotional spaces of the play up.

Rubley is a real standout; not only is the recent USC grad a fine actress with promise, but she has the lovely singing voice her character requires… As Harold, Rothhaar convincingly portrays a man who is a needy, bundle of contradictions, who with youthful dreams thwarted grasps once more for that elusive brass ring as old age approaches. Rothhaar’s Harold has an air not unlike that other salesman, Arthur Miller’s immortal, yet all too human, Willy Loman. Alas, as Harold seeks to have attention paid to him, Harold Blackburn is the low man on these Indians totem pole.

But he should not despair: If New Delhi eludes him, there will always be a role for Harold as one of Reagan’s mass murderers in his Central American Contra war. Beside, as we see in this comedy drama about foiled fantasies of what one could have been had he/she remained true unto his/her own self, there are more ways to kill sopranos than with bullets.

–Ed Rampell, February 3, 2012

Harold Blackburn, the patriarch of the family (Michael Rothhar) opens the play dressed as a Maharajah revealing the reason for his attire. Harold is a successful businessman, but dreams of attaining something more to further his ego. At this time, he is hoping to be appointed as the next Ambassador to India. This sets the plot for why The Indians Are Coming to Dinner.

Tonight Henry and his wife Lynn (the perky Sara Newman) are expecting guests for dinner in the form of government official Anil Desai (Kevin Vavasseur) and his son Deepok (Rikin Vasani). Frivolous Lynn is desperately trying to plan an authentic Indian dinner with the help of Woo (delightful Peter Chen), the family’s longtime cook.

Meanwhile, 18-year-old daughter Alexandra (charming Thea Rubley) has arrived home from college. She has a dream of her own to become an opera star and is scheduled to compete that same night in a competition that could earn her a position with an Italian Opera Company. However, Harold, expecting, and counting on, the entire family to be present when the Indians come for dinner, is under the impression that Alexandra has come for just that. Unfortunately Harold and the flippant Lynn are oblivious to their daughter’s wish to be come an opera singer, and when Harold discovers that she does not intend to be at the dinner, he becomes incensed and insists that she be there. Alexandra looks to her younger brother Christopher (Justin Preston) for solace as if he hasn’t his own problems with Mother and Father who seem to be unmindful of both of their children as they go about their own daily lives. Hilarious scenes occur when the Indians finally arrive for their dinner with the Blackburns. Rubley has a chance to perform during the play displaying a beautiful operatic voice.

Tom Buderwitz has created a well-appointed two-level set representing the home of the Blackburns in the form of a downstairs family room, a dining room, a kitchen (not seen off of the dining room), and three bedrooms upstairs.

The Indians Are Coming to Dinner continues at the Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd. in Venice, playing Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 PM, Sundays at 3 PM, through March 25. For tickets, call (310) 822-8392 or go online at www.PacificResidentTheatre.com. Recommended.

Boasting some winning one-liners and artful emotional interactions, Rowland’s play teems with complex themes and ideas centering on Reagan-era entitlement and the despair of upper-middle-class mediocrity Director Julia Fletcher’s character-driven production suffers from occasional pacing lapses, but Rothhaar’s blustering performance as the family’s Jackie Gleason-like King Baby Patriarch is a compelling, tragic turn.

Pacific Resident Theatre
Reviewed by Les Spindle for Backstage
January 29, 2012

Photo by Vitor Martins

Jennifer W. Rowland’s play is billed as a comedy, but its smart literary allusions to Greek drama (“Agamemnon”) and opera (“Rigoletto”) and steadily spiraling web of despair imbue the eccentric piece with elements of classic tragedy. As the play focuses on an affluent yet troubled San Francisco household in 1984, where a lot more talking than listening occurs, the story’s backdrop is President Richard M. Nixon’s landslide election victory and the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India. The play also cleverly illuminates East-West cultural differences, yet the essence of Rowland’s themes is more personal than political. Impeccably acted and exquisitely designed, director Julia Fletcher’s rendition scores a bull’s-eye.

As the focal character, Harold Blackman, a discontented businessman in his late 60s, Michael Rothhaar parlays the juiciest part into the most moving performance. In a prologue featuring the blustery Harold in the guise of a Maharajah, the family patriarch breaks the fourth wall to share the news that he is expecting to fulfill a lifelong dream of being appointed ambassador to India. He proudly summarizes his myriad career accomplishments while stating his desire for more.

As the narrative gets underway, we discover that Harold’s 18-year-old daughter, Alexandra (Thea Rubley), is paying a brief visit from her studies at Dartmouth College. Harold assumes that she has come home to attend a dinner he is hosting for Indian government official Anil Desai (a drolly amusing Kevin Vavesseur). The patriarch hopes the evening will culminate in Desai’s confirmation of Harold’s appointment as ambassador. Alexandra, however, is focused on fulfilling her own dream. Yearning to be a professional opera singer, she is home to compete as a finalist in a competition that could earn her a job with an Italian opera company. Unfortunately, the competition happens to be the same evening as Harold’s all-important dinner, where he expects his entire family to be present.

The superb Rubley quickly earns our empathy as a daughter whose ambitious father and daffy mother (the very funny Sara Newman) are completely oblivious to her passionate devotion to her chosen field, not to mention her other emotional needs as well. Alexandra only gets a degree of understanding from her teenage brother, Christopher (a radiant Justin Preston), but he has his own problems, being a pothead with a rap sheet. Excellent support comes from Peter Chen, as the befuddled family cook, and Rikin Vasani, as Anil’s enthusiastic son, who hilariously leads the reluctant family in rounds of chants to a Ganesh statue.

The production is greatly enhanced by Tom Buderwitz’s ravishing and highly functional two-tiered set showing the main family room downstairs and three upstairs bedrooms, embellished by Leigh Allen’s evocative lighting. Keith Stevenson’s sound and Audrey Eisner’s costumes are likewise first-rate.

The script could stand some trimming. Some gags—such as one about a malfunctioning answering machine—merely distract from the narrative. Yet all in all this intelligent and affecting work is being given a superlative world-premiere staging.
Presented by and at Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd., Venice. Jan. 28–Mar. 25. Thu.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. (310) 822-8392 or www.pacificresidenttheatre.com.

THE THING IS…“I am from Spokane, Washington. I started performing at a very early age, I think since seeing the film, Singin’ in the Rain. I decided right then I wanted to sing that song. I began taking drama lessons quite early. I actually went to University of Washingon in poli sci with the idea of going into law but instead went to grad school in drama. I decided I could become a lawyer any time, but I better try to be an actor first. I have been a member of this [Pacific Resident Theatre] company since Orpheus Descending [2003]. I first became involved with the J.M. Barrie play a couple of years ago in [artistic director] Marilyn Fox’s acting class because she loved the play and was looking to explore the possibility of producing it. I worked on it with Joe (McGovern) in class. I play a char woman during the time of World War I. It wasn’t too much of a stretch. We still have char women today, people who clean apartments, mop floors and things like that. I lived in New York for many years and that’s what I did. I cleaned apartments. But back in Barrie’s time, it was difficult to move beyond your station in life, especially in wartime. So, as in this play, it would be natural for char women to form their own social groups. And within her group, she is so intimidated by the other char women talking so much about their sons who are serving in the British military, she pretends to have a son, whose name she copies from a newspaper. Of course, the drama begins when the real soldier confronts her.” — Penny Safranek is featured in the title role of The Old Lady Shows Her Medals, opposite Joe McGovern, one of two short plays by J.M. Barrie that make up Barrie: Back to Back, running at Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice.

Once again, Pacific Resident Theatre and Artistic Director Marilyn Fox brings unique and rarely produced plays to the theater. The second show of their 25th season features an evening of two plays written by J.M. Barrie, principally known for his play, Peter Pan, or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, written in 1904. The two plays, written within four years of each other, and definitely quite different from one another, still bare some universal theme.

The first play, Rosalind, directed by Dana Dewes, features Lesley Fera as Mrs. Page. We find her in the parlour of a charming cottage by the sea – far from London (beautiful set design by Nick Santiago). She has come there to relax from her rigorous life in London, and her thoughts of being middle-age, when her stay is interrupted by a young man, Charles Roche (Kevin Railsback). Roche has been on a walking tour and is seeking a brief moment of shelter from the rain. Coincidence has it that Roche knows of Mrs. Page’s daughter, a beautiful successful stage star, with whom he fancies himself in love. But as the story progresses, the dialogue between the two characters touches on passions, age, and what is real and what is not. It also features, alternately, Sarah Zinsser and Ann Bronston performing the role of Dame Quickly.

The second play, The Old Lady Shows Her Medals, is a more touching story that takes place in London during World War I, directed by Marilyn Fox and Dana Dewes. Mrs. Dowey (Penny Safranek) and her char women friends, Mrs. Twymley (Roses Prichard), Mrs. Mickleham (Sara Zinsser), amd The Haggerty Woman (Jennifer Lonsway), are chatting away in Mrs. Dowey’s basement home. Mrs. Dowey is reminiscing about the letters she receives from her son in the service, when Mr. Willings (William Lithgow) arrives to tell her that her son is here on a short furlough and is coming to see her. She appears a bit excited, but nervous as her friends leave. When Kenneth Dowey (Joe McGovern) arrives, the reason for her actions are apparent when it is revealed that Mrs. Dowey has no son. But the dialogue between these two lonely people (McGovern with a perfect Scottish brogue), and the outcome, present a warm and tender message. (The set change is by Nick Santiago.)

As quoted from Marilyn Fox, “J.M. Barrie’s timeless explorations of age, love, longing and the search for the “impossible possibility” are unusually provocative,” and these two plays are reminiscent of just that and beautifully dramatized by a gifted cast.

The enduring popularity of “Peter Pan” overshadows J.M. Barrie’s considerable theatrical canon, which contains a significant number of entirely viable works, however dated their dramaturgy may seem to modern sensibilities. In keeping with this, Pacific Resident Theatre’s enchanting double bill of rarely seen one-acts by the diminutive Scotsman makes a persuasive case for revisiting Barrie territory beyond Neverland.

Both plays—”Rosalind” and “The Old Lady Shows Her Medals”—explore the consequences of improbable intergenerational affection. Each turns on a secret, which Barrie reveals midway through the narrative. “Rosalind,” dating from 1914, takes its title from the heroine of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” It’s the pet role of actress Beatrice Page, whose autographed picture sits on the mantel of an English seaside cottage. Her mother (a radiant Lesley Fera) discusses the pros and cons of middle age with the boarding house landlady (Ann Bronston, alternating with Sarah Zinsser). Enter callow Charles Roche (Kevin Railsback), infatuated with Beatrice, which cues up Barrie’s central twist, turning the tables on Charles and the audience.

Under Dana Dewes’ disciplined direction, “Rosalind” doesn’t attempt to contextualize its delicate humor or antiquated terminology for 21st-century ears, which only increases its appeal. Bronston is fine in a functional role, and Railsback makes a capable foil, but make no mistake: The show belongs to Fera, whose gift for playing interior contradictions against external style is in a class of its own. In the fact of this magical turn, one understands what stage icons such as Maude Adams and Gertrude Lawrence must have meant to their audiences.

“The Old Lady Shows Her Medals,” co-directed by Dewes and Marilyn Fox, ups the ante, to first tickling, then eye-moistening effect. This 1918 parable concerns a London charwoman (the marvelous Penny Safranek) and a brusque Scottish soldier (Joe McGovern, a find), and to reveal more would be criminal. Again, Bronston, Zinsser, and Jennifer Lonsway are competent functionaries as fellow mop-wielders; William Lithgow invests the small but pivotal role of a minister with skill. Still, the heart and soul of the piece is the interaction between Safranek’s yearning maternal spirit and McGovern’s vivid filial upstart, which both actors perform as though they were inventing their roles on the spot in a transcendent dual act.

The designs are serviceable rather than ornate, particularly Nick Santiago’s bipolar set, but that’s ultimately irrelevant. What matters here is Barrie’s specific, elegant language and still-pertinent understanding of the human heart, which “Barrie: Back to Back” largely perceives and delivers. This reviewer can only hope that these wholly endearing short works represent a trend toward revisiting the author, starting with “The Admirable Crichton,” and taking off from there.

Source: Back Stage Actors Resource

“Thoughtless follies made her low and stained her name,” says Mrs. Page (Lesley Fera), referring to her actress daughter Beatrice, in J.M. Barrie’s Rosalind, at Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice. The line is telling because it’s such a perfect description not only of Beatrice but of the 14-year-old title character in Oscar Wilde’s Salome, being performed at Zombie Joe’s Underground in North Hollywood. Both productions deal with age grasping for youth through the prism of romance, and are samplings of the British cultural zeitgeist about 100 years ago.

Rosalind is the first in a pair of Barrie one-acts currently playing at PRT. Mrs. Page, who’s been waxing about the pleasure of middle age, is in the parlor of a boarding house by the sea, far from London, in the first decade of the 20th century. She’s speaking to a young university student named Charles Roche (Kevin Railsback), who’s seeking refuge from the storm outside. He instantly recognizes the photo on the mantle as the stage actress Beatrice, and protests his love of the young maiden to her mother, Mrs. Page.

To reveal more of the plot is to ruin a vital twist on which the themes of theater, role-playing and willful deception hang. Suffice it to say that Mrs. Page knows Charles well, more than he knows her, and the callow youth eventually finds himself smitten with the woman almost old enough to be his mother, who has “disappeared” into an enthusiastic middle age in her private life and yet remains eternally 29 in a stage life she shares with her daughter.

In fact, she finds herself summoned to London, in the course of the action, to jump in and play Rosalind in As You Like It.

Typical of drawing room comedies of the early 20th century, the play’s launch taxes patience in the attention-deficited 21st century. The house matron, Dame Quickly (Sarah Zinsser), chats amiably and lackadaisically with Mrs. Page for several minutes before the incident of the visitor becomes an issue, revealing the gentility of an earlier time and place. But things start to spark when it becomes clear that Mrs. Page is largely goofing off with the young man, and that who an actress really is, deep down, is something of an enigma. Charles reveals the telling detail of keeping Beatrice’s photograph in his wallet, directly next to that of his late sister.

Barrie’s older brother died as a child, throwing their mother into such a depression that Barrie would dress in his brother’s clothes and impersonate his whistling in order to console his mother, who said her dead son would remain a child forever. From this, Barrie’s Peter Pan emerged.

Dana Dewes’ staging gathers strength from the quality of Fera’s decorous Mrs. Page, who bursts into a gently mocking smile with the flick of a wrist, showing ridicule and compassion in a single breath. It also comes from the effect Fera has on Railsback’s haughty young student, whose swagger keeps getting kicked in the knees.

The Old Lady Shows Her Medals rounds out PRT’s rendition of cougarville. Set in a 1917 London basement home, as World War I rages, it concerns a quartet of British maids, known as charwomen (Penny Safranek, Roses Prichard, Sarah Zinsser and Jennifer Lonsway), one of whom has been corresponding with and sending cakes to a Scottish soldier in the Black Watch brigade who shares her last name, though they’re not related and have never met. The play is not only about her need for a son, but her need to be connected to the larger campaign of her nation.

Ushered down the stairs by a local reverend (William Lithgow), the brash Scot soldier (Joe McGovern), on leave, at first chastizes the old woman for being deluded and misrepresenting her situation and station. What emerges is tender, sentimental Oedipal romance, fueled by Safranek’s Mrs. Dowey and her defiant refusal to take any of soldier Kenneth Dowey’s insults seriously. Rather, her offensive so charms the orphan Scot that, after a night at the theater (of course), he winds up on his knee, proposing that she be his mother. The play flips the taboo into the sentimental, largely with hefty doses of wit.

McGovern is quite the wonder as Kenneth, bringing a hearty honesty to lines such as, “Being Scotch, there’s almost nothing I don’t know,” and when asked how he single-handedly took half a dozen prisoners, he responds, “The usual way. I surrounded ‘em!”

Marilyn Fox’s staging pulls the plays expository ropes tautly against the stained green wallpaper of Nick Santiago’s set.

Growing up—or not—and the power of imagination to transcend life’s hardships were the touchstone themes of playwright J.M. Barrie. Though chiefly remembered as the author of “Peter Pan,” his plays often spoke to more sophisticated adult sensibilities with flights of whimsy grounded in sober realism. The soulful empathy and compassion of Barrie the man were recently portrayed in the film “Finding Neverland,” and Pacific Resident Theatre beautifully evokes those qualities in a pair of one-acts billed as “Barrie: Back to Back”

Finding the timeless appeal in neglected works from classic literature is this company’s forte. These playlets from the early 1900s are essentially two-handers (albeit with a fine cast of incidental characters) about hidden identities and unexpected human connectedness.

The opener, titled “Rosalind” in a sly nod to Shakespeare’s heroine, is set in a seaside boarding house where summer guest Mrs. Page (Lesley Fera) has retreated to embrace the cozy comforts of being middle-aged. The unexpected arrival of a young man on a walking tour (Kevin Railsback) who happens to know (and is in love with) Mrs. Page’s daughter, a glamorous stage actress, prompts some sharp-witted exchanges and rueful confessions about aging, the blindness of infatuation, and the differences between theatrical artifice and genuine feeling.

“The Old Lady Shows Her Medals” delves deeper into unfulfilled longings with a World War I-era encounter between an elderly charwoman (Penny Safranek) and a Scottish infantryman (Joe McGovern, sporting a hilarious pitch-perfect brogue) who’s on leave from the trenches. McGovern’s flustered grappling with Safranek’s feisty defiance infuse their chemistry with quirky charm, culminating in a brilliantly offbeat—and touching—proposal.

Both pieces are built on surprise plot twists that could easily come across as corny and maudlin. Co-directors Marilyn Fox and Dana Dewes deftly keep the focus on Barrie’s tough-minded, unsentimental insights into the human heart: above all, the bittersweet recognition that even our most magical connections are fleeting, and all the more precious for it.

-– Philip Brandes

Marilyn Fox Leads 25th Season at Pacific Resident Theatre

by Gary Ballard | June 29, 2011

“I try to pick plays [that] I’d want somebody I love – to watch,” declares Marilyn Fox, artistic director of Pacific Resident Theatre, addressing her method of selecting material to present on her stage. Barrie: Back to Back is currently running on PRT’s main stage.

Fox is on the move, with all the attention and overlapping of tasks that her responsibilities running a theater company regularly entail. When she murmurs in an aside, “Do you have a straw?” she then hastens to explain in this phone interview, “I’m driving as we speak. I’ve just picked up my sister Marcy whose car broke down, and she bought me an iced coffee.”

Questioned about her sister’s involvement in theater, she replies, “No, Marcy majored in psychology at UCLA so she didn’t catch the [theatrical] bug from me. In fact I probably caught it from her because she got me interested in Shakespeare and writing as a girl.”

That interest defines, labels and guides Fox to this day, motivating her in a constant search for illuminating drama and rewarding her with a sense of accomplishments. She says, “I’m proud PRT is celebrating our 25th anniversary season this year. Being an actual theatrical company of [close to] 100 members is a gift proclaiming both our longevity and our growth. We have a rare situation because we have two venues – our main stage for our season and our co-op space for our developmental works, where we cannot say no to an actor who wants to get in there and work on bringing a script to fruition. Actors hear that ‘no’ far too often in their careers. With that space in our company they won’t hear it. Once they book the space, they’re free to explore the story and format they want. And they can work a long period of time tinkering with it to get it to their specifications.

“That’s how Julia came about. Vince Melocchi is a 20-year company member who wrote a hit for us a few years ago called Lions. He developed Julia from the freedom of experimenting with it in our second space. It too became a hit.”

A bit of an understatement there. Julia traveled to New York from PRT by request. Fox tells how: “Elysabeth Kleinhans owns the 59E59 Theaters in New York as part of her Kleinhans Theatrical Foundation where she has three stages to fill. She actually came out here to see our production of Becky’s New Car for a possible transfer to her facilities. She liked it okay but became more intrigued with Julia and felt it would play well for her audiences. She invited us to bring the show there as part of [59E59's] Americas Off Broadway Theater Festival. It turned out to be a comparable space to ours. Our stage is a bit deeper but not as wide. Theirs is wider but not as deep. The audience size is almost the same. As a result I think the show worked a little better in their space, because their audience had the intimacy to conjure the illusion of sitting inside the coffee shop where the story takes place. I think that made them more invested in the story. I saw the performances deepen and the play itself grow to new levels. All in all it was beneficial to our members, because they treated us with the utmost respect and it was financially equitable.”

When questioned about the oft-repeated East Coast/West Coast rivalry or jealousy, Fox answers, “It didn’t happen. I think it’s either been widely exaggerated in the past or it’s now a true part of the past and not the present. We have so much theater in LA that it’s undeniable. The biggest difference between us, I think, is in New York, theater is an industry. Here it’s not. Here it’s much closer to pure passion. But Elysabeth’s team treated us so well I’m looking forward to establishing a further relationship with them and hope we can take more of our productions there.”

No stranger to extended runs and the transfer of plays from one venue to another or across state lines, Fox praises one particular production as the premiere platform propelling her to pursue the performing arts with passion. “In 1993 we worked on [Clifford] Odets’ Awake and Sing! in our workshop space. I played Bessie Berger, the mother, even though I was only in my 30s. At that time Odets was not being done-any of his plays-that often. I think we helped change that. Also at that time we couldn’t open the play on our main stage, but I was madly in love with it, so the director Elina de Santos and I convinced Ron Sossi to let us stage it at the Odyssey. It ran for a year. It went Equity. [Fox won a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle lead performance award] We spent four years taking it around the country. It was eventually done at Lincoln Center without us, but I consider Elina and myself as producers in effect, if not in fact, because we brought it to their attention. Now who knows? Maybe it was just happenstance. Still I like to believe our production woke them to the play’s merits.”

Any conversation with Fox inevitably leads to a lively-and loving-discussion of Gar Campbell, who taught a Monday night acting class at PRT with Fox for 20 years and who died at 64 in 2007. Campbell was one of the founders of the legendary LA avant-garde troupe, the Company Theater, in 1967, but according to Fox, “Gar hadn’t planned on a theater career at all. He studied math and science and graduated with the intention of becoming an engineer with no desire or interest in pursuing anything theatrical. That changed when a pretty girl wanted him to audition for the part of John, the Witch Boy, in Dark of the Moon. He got the part. The rest of us got a fantastic theater guy who had a totally scientific left brain approach to solving problems which came in quite handy for the stage. He could flay a script like a sushi chef. I was lucky enough to spend 27 years with him. He was one of the greatest theater men there ever was and was totally an LA theater man. He had the opportunity more than once to relocate his talents to another city for greater [monetary] compensation but never did. To this day I think we honor his memory by trying to cook up a scrumptious stage feast and telling our audience ‘come look at this’.”

Along her journey through the PRT ranks, Fox not only rose to become artistic director of the company but also gained renown for her hands-on directorial chores as well. She was nominated by the LADCC for directing both Golden Boy and Playboy of the Western World and won the group’s directing award for Ondine in 1993 and last year’s The Browning Version, in addition to picking up another performance award from the Circle for her lead role of Lady Torrance in Tennessee Williams’ Orpheus Descending. She also won the LA Weekly Career Achievement Award in 2004.

So which brings her the greatest satisfaction, acting or directing? “Both are quite special,” she maintains. “As a director it’s an honor to guide a group of actors through a field sowed with the seeds of a great playwright’s mind. But the difference for me is I have such a love of acting it becomes an even greater honor to be the person to vibrate the words of a notable soul, to become the conduit through which his ideas can flow. It’s more than an honor when I pull it off successfully. It’s a miracle I can feel circulating through my very being.”

Right now Fox is guiding rather than vibrating as she shares directorial duties with Dana Dewes on Barrie: Back to Back, a bill of two one-acts by J. M. Barrie, including The Old Lady Shows Her Medals and Rosalind, which serves as the second show of PRT’s 25th season. This production came about because, as Fox explains, “I’ve wanted to do an evening of Barrie for a very long time. I always find myself shocked by the honesty in his writing. His work comes to us like a present in a pretty package, almost like a child would get at a birthday party, but when you open the present, you find it has a secret hidden inside and then another secret inside that one and on and on like Chinese boxes nested inside one another. These two plays mirror each other with a core of similarities where something is denied and another character has to get past that denial. I’m deliberately speaking in generalizations, because I don’t want to give away the secrets Barrie worked to create.”

Sir James Matthew Barrie stood tall in the literary world despite topping the scales at only 5’1″ or 5’3½”, according to different sources. As a novelist he shared a contemporary readership with Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll. He had personal friendships with George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells. He enjoyed a long correspondence with Robert Louis Stevenson although the two never met in person. He and Arthur Conan Doyle co-authored an opera entitled Jane Annie, or The Good Conduct Prize. He was knighted during the reign of King George V. He recited stories to the Duke of York’s young daughters,who became Princess Margaret and the present Queen Elizabeth II. But after all the name-dropping has faded into the yellowing pages of history, J. M. Barrie is remembered today as the creator of the character Peter Pan and the play that bears the same name.

Fox, who has done her homework, shares her thoughts on what made the writer tick. “All the great authors in history are incomparable. You can’t begin to compare any of them with each other because each one brings a unique way of looking at the world to his craft of writing. Barrie, for example, talks about things other people don’t talk about. He was one of 10 children. When his older brother David died in an accident when Barrie was only six years old, Barrie’s mother became inconsolable over the loss. He started to dress in David’s clothing and copy his mannerisms and speech. His plays were later filled with the theme of the child who never grows up. They expressed the love and longing for a mother, the fear of aging, the ecstasy of being in spiritual flight, the allure of staying forever young. They were witty, intelligent and funny, but at their core each play carried a little nugget from the soul. They affect me in the profoundest way in that I don’t consider myself a woman. I think I’m really an old girl.

Kevin Railsback and Lesley Fera in “Rosalind”
“He wrote his play Rosalind as a tribute to his wife, the actress Mary Ansell, who retired from the stage after they married in 1894. Barrie later divorced her on the grounds of infidelity in 1909. H. G. Wells tried to encourage the couple to stay together.”

Dewes, the other director of Barrie: Back to Back, began her acting/singing career at age five in Atlantic City variety shows. After Dewes directed The Valiant for PRT’s co-op space, she served as assistant director of Fata Morgana and worked as associate director on last year’s The Browning Version, so this marks her third collaboration with Fox, who says, “I can’t take credit for Dana. She was a long-time student of Gar’s. Her success comes on a direct line from Gar’s teaching through all her hard work for PRT.”

Concerning the process of determining what steps she will engage to take a play from page to stage, Fox elaborates, “We pick material that’s calling to be done. We deliver to an audience what needs to be delivered. The main thing that needs to strike me is its authenticity. I read a lot of wonderfully intelligent scripts with a beginning, a middle and an end, but they’re not imprinted with the playwright in them. I don’t feel he was impelled to write it. I don’t care whether it was just written yesterday or 100 years ago. I don’t want just a clever idea. I want it to come out of the entrails of the writer with a human element or a deep intelligence that has to fight its way out of that person’s life. If not, it feels hollow to me. When I’m reading something or watching something, I want to remember that we’re human. I want that element to touch me that makes me remember it.”

Beckoning with Barrie: Back to Back, Marilyn Fox is betting baguettes to bulldozers that Pacific Resident Theatre will win bravos once again.
nt Theatre will win bravos once again.