Just 45 Minutes from Broadway
This is the second play written by Henry Jaglom to be directed by Gary Imhoff and starring Tanna Frederick in its World Premiere at The Edgemar Center For the arts. Mr. Jaclom has achieved considerable renown for innumerable films including, A Safe Place, Tracks, Sitting ducks, Can She Bake a Cherry Pie, Always- But Not Forever, Someone to Love, New Year’s Day, Eating, Venince/Venice, Babyfever, Last Summer In the Haptons, Gonging Shipping, Festival In Cannes, Déjà Vu, Hollywood Dreams and currently Irene In Time.
Just 45 Minutes from Broadway is performed by successful and well known actors. Outstanding in the cast are Diane Louise Salinger, beautiful, provocative, imaginative, and daring in all her choices, and David Proval whose stead rock centeredness and simplicity grounds the show. Jack Heller, who is always good, gives a layered performance of a veteran Yiddish theater actor turned English speaking actor, surviving in the industry for many years.
The set is stupendous. How fortunate actors are to have a set and lighting designer such as Joel Daavid creating for their show. I counted eight different playing areas on stage. There was an attic, a bedroom, a stairway, dining room, kitchen, porch, yard, and a real swing to play on…everything the needs of the play could possibly desire; in a word, quit beautiful and exceptional.
The play is about a family of actors, all but one of whom has an all consuming devotion to theatre. Times are tough, theatre jobs few, and so in addition to opening their home to a brother who is performing in a nearby dinner theatre, they take in an aging character actress as a border. The dissident sibling returns home with her fiancé and, of course, the unexpected happens. Sound a bit like an old Hollywood film from the forties or fifties? Perhaps, but the second act picks up considerably and there are some great lines, a bit of depth, humor and much sought after resolution.
Edgemar Center For the Arts
2437 Main Street, Santa Monica, Ca. 90405
www.edgemarcenter.org
(310) 392-7327