Review: NOT/NOW at Write Act Repertory

The world premiere of playwright Darrin Yalacki's NOT/NOW brings together four thirtysomething friends in Chicago to commemorate the engagement of the fifth member of their quintet - Goldie (Karen Baughn), who is in from LA - only to find that, due to an unfortunate autocorrect, Goldie is still painfully single after a very public breakup. As the reunion turns from celebratory to sympathetic, confidences are forsaken and friendships are fractured forever. Akin to The First Deep Breath, now running at the Geffen, and Tracy Letts' five-time Tony-winning August: Osage County, NOT/NOW shines a light on the different fissures of a family and how both secrets and truths can leave jagged scars.

Goldie's reappearance (she's possibly back for good) upends the lives of Vanessa (Lindsay Seim), who can't hold down a job but has committed to being in a throuple; gay blabbermouth Baker (James Singleton), who doth protest too much about how happy he is being single; and closed-off Tamela (Rachel Lemos) and Rafael (Oscar Ramirez), a couple who broke up but remain friends with benefits. Throw in Baker's special "punch," which flows freely, and the unexpected arrival of stripper Jack (Mason Eaglin) and the friends' frenetic jumble of revelations and their evening of navel gazing (so much navel gazing) is a powder keg of soap opera cum sitcom tropes.

Yalacki's script would be better served if it had more time to breathe and establish its characters so they can become fully fleshed out. We jump right into the melodrama so there's no real time to get our sea legs. Director Amanda Blake Davis allows her actors to race through some of the dialogue, practically tripping over words, perhaps because it's unwieldy at points. The relationships are contrived and so are the situations the characters find themselves in. Eaglin's appearance juices the story with some much-needed energy. He brings a sexy goofiness to the proceedings and feels most at home in his skin as Jack, who has his own surprising place in the dramas unfolding.

The black box theater is a good venue for the 90-minute show, which takes place entirely in Baker's living room. It lends the story a sense of immediacy that is necessary for this kind of dramedy. But for as much as the characters all drink, heavily, nonstop, no one, not one of them, gets demonstrably drunk, which would have added a messiness to the accusations and revelations that are hurled and uncovered. Instead, everyone seems stone-cold sober and thusly just childish.

It's one thing to have unresolved issues; it's another to be in your mid-thirties and unable to process them with a little more aplomb than these friends do. With some fine tuning to the script and the direction (and thusly the performances), this could be a moving meditation on that nebulous space between the freedom of your twenties and the dawning responsibilities of the forties. As it is, it's rushed and therefore doesn't have the resonance it could.

NOT/NOW is performed at the Write Act Repertory @ the Brickhouse Theatre, 10950 Peach Grove Street, North Hollywood, through March 5. Tickets are available at simpletix.com/e/not-now-tickets-122901.

All photos coutesy Laura Lineback

To post a comment, you must register and login.