That Perfect Moment
Playwrights Charles Bartlett and Jack Cooper's partially autobiographical nostalgic trip down memory lane has all the depth and veracity as the pop song Summer of '69 by Bryan Adams. The following excerpted lyrics—please feel free to sing along—aptly sums up this comedy about four aging baby boomers reliving their glory days:
Me and some guys from school
Had a Band and we tried real hard
Jimmy quit and Jody got married
I shoulda known we'd never get far
Oh when I look back now
That summer seemed to last forever
And if I had the choice
Yeah - I'd always wanna be there
Those were the best days of my life
And for Mark Vanowen (Tait Ruppert), the best days of his life were when he and his fellow members of a one-hit wonder rock band “The Weeds” played at the Venice Pavilion. He’s still got the poster proudly displayed in his Valley suburban home to show for it.
But his exasperated wife Sarah (Kelly Lester) has tired from living in the past. As she threatens to leave him for good, Mark seizes hold of an opportunity to bring the band back together when a fickle agent agrees to release their single on a compilation collection of rare recordings from the sixties era.
The rights to the songs proves to be their undoing as one band member, Skip Chandler (Bruce Katzman), a self-proclaimed liberal now turned Republican refuses to sign off on the rights. As Mark’s marriage falls apart and a chance for a comeback slips through his fingers, his former band members reveal their personal struggles and lost idealism realized by time and maturity, something Mark is unwilling to accept.
From the psychedelic drugs of an age to the refill prescriptions of Lipitor and Boniva brought on by age, the play plays it about as safely as an annual colonoscopy exam. Much of the problem stems from the corny humor that thuds like the goop at the bottom of a dried-up lava lamp and punch lines even Cheech & Chong would find as stale an old roach. Even the characters are a bit “on the nose” with surnames lifted from well-known Valley residential street names such as Vanowen, Chandler and Woodley. And the characters are about as flatly drawn as the streets their named after.
The cast does a mightily veritable job fleshing out their roles despite Rick Sparks’ lackluster direction and the script’s convenient plot twists. Guerin Barry is deliciously droll as a bitter queen who’s ironically the only straight man of this bunch. John Bigham as New Age masseuse Albert Tessdale charms and delights with his wide-eyed innocence. Katzman and Ruppert give excellent turns as they attempt to find middle ground in their opposing views.
Kelly Lester is distinctive in her dual roles as Mark’s wife Sarah and chirpy agent Woodley, but much of her performance is sadly lost behind a scrim.
Set design and projection designer Adam Flemming provides all the accouterments, perhaps overly so, of a modest suburban home. Wig and hair design by Diane Martinous gives a visual gag a believable punch.
The perfect moment of this play comes at the end with a music video of the foursome featuring original music by Sky Keegan, lending this play some much-needed authenticity.
If you’re a fan of Bryan Adams’ Summer of ’69 then this play is for you. But Adams gets across the same ideas in less than three minutes and more memorably too. “That Perfect Moment” lasts 90 minutes without an intermission. My advice is to skip the play and download the song.
Man we were killin' time
We were young and restless
We needed to unwind
I guess nothin' can last forever - forever, no, yeah
And now the times are changin'
Look at everything that's come and gone
Sometimes when I play that old six-string
I think about you, wonder what went wrong
“That Perfect Moment”
Runs through Nov 8
Fri and Sat at 8pm
Sundays at 3pm
NoHo Arts Center
11136 Magnolia Blvd
North Hollywood
PH: 323-960-7745
www.plays411.com/perfect