GROWTH SPURT

Loss, redemption, maturity fuel family healing in witty Coming of Age

Patrons of the Jewel Theatre Company may fondly recall its production of a play by Santa Cruz author Kate Hawley back in 2015. That excellent play, Complications From A Fall, is a kind of companion piece to Hawley' newest work, Coming Of Age, "a serious comedy" now having its world premiere at JTC.

Both plays deal with the theme of aging parents and their effect on the lives of their middle-aged children.

Hawley is particularly incisive in exploring the radical idea that parents may have once had —or continue to have — separate, and interesting lives outside the box into which their children have always confined them.

Coming Of Age is less overtly comic than its predecessor, although it still has plenty of witty dialogue. Protagonist, Ian (the entertaining Mike Ryan), author of literary novels, drops in to the family home in upstate New York to visit his father, John (J. Michael Flynn), an acclaimed university professor, now retired, and recently widowed.

They've been setting up this visit for weeks, but John is surprised to see him, and doesn't seem too eager to have his son stick around. Ian finds out why with the arrival of Deirdre (Martha Brigham). Once a bedazzled student of John's, nearly 40 years younger than he is, Deirdre has become a fixture in the household.

As discreet as she is in person, her presence chips new fissures into the already tense father-son relationship.

Flynn, Brigham, Ryan: Menage a trois

Director Paul Whitworth keeps the action unobtrusively fluid — especially in the dynamic second half when Hawley's focus becomes sharper; all of the characters get a chance to express their own feelings and motivations in Hawley's simple, eloquent dialogue.

Flynn's portrait of John as a cranky oldster betrayed by time is tempered by flashes of the magnificent lion he must have once been.

And, as usual with JTC, tech work is first-class, especially Kent Dorsey's outstanding Craftsman-style set. You will want to live here!
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GEM at the JEWEL

Dueling sibs: Mike Ryan and Julie James

Sharp writing, great cast, highlight JTC's 'Complications From a Fall'

For the fourth production of its Tenth Anniversary season, Jewel Theatre Company has plucked out a plum. Santa Cruz's own Kate Hawley bestows a gift on JTC and its lucky patrons with her new play, Complications From A Fall. This is the World Premiere of Hawley's play, a witty, often breezy comedy about a  serious subject—aging parents, and the grown children reluctantly deputized to care for them.

The play has everything to recommend it to theatre companies large and small. It can be staged on a single set (with a few inventive flourishes, like those dreamed up for the JTC production by director Paul Whitworth). The cast is small, consisting of four terrific acting parts. And the subject matter is universal—parent-child relationships, sibling friction, family secrets, and memories, lost and found. Hawley skillfully mines this material for life-sized humor, without resorting to farce, or cheapening the drama of the situation.

An agitated Helen (Julie James), a spinster-ish university professor, is fuming in the house of her elderly, bedridden mother. She's awaiting the arrival of her younger brother, Teddy (Mike Ryan), a scruffy musician in an obscure rock band that's perpetually on the road. Helen has been their mother's caretaker since the older woman took a fall awhile back, but she has a scholarly conference to attend so Teddy has to come home for a few days to help out.

Teddy faces his first hurdle when his mother (infuriating, yet beguiling Nada Rowand) wakes up; she recognizes him as her beloved son, but keeps calling for the previous hired caregiver, Lucy. His sister has told Teddy she let Lucy go because pieces of their mother's jewelry kept disappearing, but Mom becomes so distressed, Teddy calls in Lucy (an engaging Audrey Rumsby) for back-up.

Everything works, from B. Modern's effective costumes and Kate Edmunds’ smart set design (its walls covered with the handwritten script of old letters), to the wartime-era pop songs that play between scenes in this thoughtful and entertaining production. (Read more)