Part 2 of The Gary Plays, an octet written and directed by Murray Mednick. First presented at The Electric Lodge, Spring 2005 with John Diehl, Donald Berman, Dana Weiluns, and Mickey Swenson.
NOTES ON THE PLAY
In Tirade, Gary visits the park where his son was shot, apparently at random. Struggling with murderous rage, he is joined by two “choral” figures, internalized voices that re-enact painful memories and goad him toward a moment of surrender. This moment of honesty does in fact arrive, and in the peace that follows Gary decides to do penance for his pride by carrying his son’s ashes to the sea. In Gary’s Walk he then retrieves Danny’s ashes from the boy’s mother Gloria, and walks them toward the Pacific. Newly destitute, Gary continues the internal debate with his two choral voices, a modern-day Lear wandering the urban wilderness of Los Angeles. His plan for the ashes involves a visit to his second ex-wife, Marcia, and her new husband Vernon, a wealthy commercial actor with a lavish spread in the Palisades. His intentions vis-à-vis these two remain cloaked in darkness, as if the violent, self-pitying impulses he struggled with in Tirade have not been fully exorcized. Along his journey he also encounters various figures mundane and divine, including Antonio, a Latino angel of death.
Guy Zimmerman – Artistic Director
“A staging of The Gary Plays, the first three works in a tetrology by Murray Mednick, is one of the most engaging and ambitious local theater events of the past few seasons…. Mednick’s Gary is a sort of L.A. Leopold Bloom… The Los Angeles River may be a mere trickle compared to the River Liffey, but The Gary Plays surge with a desire to find–in the seemingly mundane wanderings of one man–the very soul of a city.” – James C. Taylor, KCRW Theatre Talk