Review: FIFTY: WORDS Takes a Brutally Honest Look at What it Takes to Make any Partnership Worth Saving

The Battle of the Sexes rages on during the Los Angeles premiere of FIFTY: WORDS by Michael Weller at the Lounge Theatre in Hollywood, featuring the remarkable actors Olga Konstantulakis and Eric Larson, directed to perfection by Shane Stevens. Perhaps because the two characters' verbal and emotional interactions with each other so honestly reflect exactly what goes on in my own relationship that I felt completely drawn in, often nodding with the realization that often two such differing outlooks on life cannot possibly find a central meeting ground that works for both people. And yet, we keep trying.

On a realistically appointed kitchen set designed by John Mahr and beautifully lit by Kaitlin D. Chang, we are invited into the home of Adam and Jan who are alone together for the first time in almost 10 years as their nine-year-old son is away at his first-ever sleepover. It becomes immediately apparent that Adam is more at ease with allowing his son to experience life on his own terms, while Jan seems more interested in perfecting her work. But as their relationship suffers through many trials and tribulations due to differences in their parenting styles, relationship needs/wants, and career goals, each subsequent layer that's revealed shows yet another problem in their marriage.

FIFTY: WORDS takes an incisive close-up look at the emotional battleground of contemporary relationships and the lengths to which a couple will go to save it. In fact, this smoothly scripted multi-layered play reveals how closely love and hate can be linked in marriage, or any relationship for that matter, when two people attempt to sort out their basic outlook-on-life differences in order to stay together in harmony.

But the intensity of this play could never work without the perfect couple to play the couple, and director Share Stevens and fight choreographer Jen Albert are to be commended for trusting actors Olga Konstantulakis and Eric Larson, who are also co-producers of the show, to let their guard down and open their hearts and souls to the intensely personal strife caused as the relationship layers are peeled away in the kitchen, on the stairs, in the bedroom, at the computer, on the kitchen table, and over the phone.

And in the end, you just might wonder if telling the truth to save a relationship can ever work, or if doing so is really its death knell. Certainly Adam and Jan may never figure it out, although like so many couples, chances are they will probably stay together no matter what for the sake of their son whose own emotional problems are starting to send him into hibernation.

In case you are wondering, the title of the play reflects the fact that while the Eskimos have fifty words for snow, in English there is just one word for all the complicated forms of love. Certainly love is love and a necessity for mental health, but how many words can you think of that best describe that emotion which unites two people into sacrificing their own wants and needs for the sake of someone else? Is everyone co-dependent, too afraid to make it on their own even when situations turn violent, both physically and emotionally? Is there really just one person who can fulfill all your wants and needs? It's the age-old question of is it better to be with the wrong person rather than being alone? But is there really only one answer - or fifty of them?

The Los Angeles premiere of FIFTY: WORDS by Michael Weller continues on Friday and Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm through April 7, 2019 at the Lounge Theatre, located at 6201 Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, 90038. General admission seating is $20 and tickets may be purchased online at fiftywords.brownpapertickets.com or by calling (800) 838-3006. See it with someone you love and I guarantee you will recognize so much of your own relationship as shared by Olga Konstantulakis and Eric Larson in this modern take on the ever-present, push me-pull you Battle of the Sexes.

Photos by Zadrian Wali

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