Review: Tantalizing Life Tidbits Well Shared in SAFE AT HOME: An Evening With Orson Bean

To those of us called Baby Boomers, we grew up being entertained by television shows everyone in the family could enjoy together. There was the Ed Sullivan Show, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and many others too numerous to name. I remember watching To Tell the Truth and attempting to guess along with the panelists, one of whom was Orson Bean, who added his own humorous stamp to the show for eight years. So when I heard that his one-man show "Safe at Home, An Evening with Orson Bean" was being presented at Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice (where he has been a long-time member), I knew the stories he was going to share would be extremely humorous. And, as it turns out, deeply insightful into how he survived and thrived in the entertainment industry for so many years.

A consummate raconteur and undisputed triple threat, having won accolades for 20 years on Broadway as well as in film (Being John Malkovich) and on television, his "up close and personal" story gives audiences not only a look into the heart of this multi-awarded entertainer, but into a generation that created the foundation for Broadway and Hollywood as it is today. His easy and comfortable down home style humor, enhanced by performing on the set of a rundown room he describes as being "similar to the home in which I grew up," allows you to feel as if you are a visitor in his Venice Canal bungalow. Bean shares not only stories but some very vaudevillian songs and magic tricks, even calling upon audience members to participate in old-fashioned skits, all of which had the audience in stitches. In fact, Bean held the rapt attention of everyone in the 99-seat theater on the night I attended.

For those unfamiliar with his career, as a comic Orson Bean appeared on The Tonight Show over 200 times, a hundred of them as substitute host. He played Loren Bray, the crusty storekeeper, for seven years on the western drama Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and played Mrs. McCluskey's husband for the final three seasons of Desperate Housewives. He even beat Charlie Sheen with a cane on Two and a Half Men, but "it seems to have done Charlie no good," shared Bean during his 90-minute solo show.

The show is about many things, but mostly gratitude for a life well-lived. Bean shares many of the highs and lows he has experienced including the break-up of his first marriage, how he found his faith in God which he believes led him to meeting his wife Alley Mills Bean (who is one of the show's producers), and many moments of wonder and heartbreak during his early years with his family in North Cambridge, a suburb of Boston. It's a real tribute to his stamina that he survived with his great sense of humor intact.

While jokes may be the most "wildly reviled art form" according to Bean, he certainly knows how to deliver them with panache and warmth, no matter how corny they may be. Fellow long-time Pacific Resident member, director Guillermo Cienfuegos, matches Bean's energy and zest for life both on and off the stage, their collaboration a fitting tribute to how truthful communication makes great entertainment when delivered with wit and humor.

The World Premiere of SAFE AT HOME: An Evening With Orson Bean continues at 8pm Fridays and Saturdays, 3pm Sundays through March 13, 2016 at Pacific Resident Theatre, located at 703 Venice Blvd. in Venice, CA. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased can be purchased online at http://www.pacificresidenttheatre.com or by calling (310) 822-8392.

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