In an optimum production that features Sandra Burns’ set design, Adam Blumenthal’s lighting and Dennis Yen’s sound, all exceptional, director Diane Rodriguez beautifully balances the play’s slice-of-life directness with its farcical overtones.  Subplots abound, and Patterson makes some sweetly salient points about the role of faith in the recovery process, as the people in Pamela’s orbit struggle with their own burdensome brain chemistry. The cast includes amusing Johnny Giacalone as Pamela’s wastrel brother, passionate Diarra Kilpatrick as his recovering addict wife and Brendan O’Malley as an alternately nurturing and lecherous doctor. Anita Dashiell shines as a wise survivor of the 12-step wars whose empathy is hard-won.

–  F. Kathleen Foley

“Sick,” Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., L.A. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends May 16. $34. (213) 489-0994, Ext. 107. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

Photo: Johnny Giacalone (left), Vonessa Martin, Ramón de Ocampo and Quinton Lopez. Photo credit: Adam Blumenthal.

via Los Angeles Times

LA Review: ‘Sick’

Playwrights’ Arena and the Latino Theatre Company at Los Angeles Theatre Center

Reviewed by Travis Michael Holder | April 20, 2010

PHOTO CREDIT: Adam Blumenthal

Playwright Erik Patterson admits to personal hypochondria in the program notes for this resplendently twisted effort—yet another in his string of hilariously wicked and glaringly contemporary plays gloriously sending up the communal sickness that affects us all as our country becomes progressively more immune to wellness. Sandra Burns’ clever design uses every corner and level here. And although she turns a difficult space into a starkly white hospital setting, the action becomes more than a waiting room complete with a rack of get-well cards for sale; it becomes our lives as we crash headlong into a collectively ailing modern society with not one advanced pharmaceutical yet developed that we can ingest to make it better.

Pamela (Vonessa Martin) is indeed a hypochondriac, more interested in finding someone who will diagnose something terminal in her own body than in worrying about Michael (Quinton Lopez), her 10-year-old son battling leukemia. She gets it on with Michael’s pediatrician (Brendan O’Malley), hoping he’ll find a lump in her breast while copping a feel, while ignoring her husband (Ramon de Ocampo), who is lusting after his A.A.-obsessed sister-in-law (Diarra Kilpatrick), estranged from her overindulging husband (Johnny Giacolone) in favor of falling in love with God. In other words, just your average everyday American family, if one has Patterson’s ability to strip off the thin veneer of civilized behavior we as a society desperately try to maintain.

Director Diane Rodriguez’s cast is uniformly golden, especially the deadpanned Martin and the smoothly over-the-top Giacolone, who provides the best scene as he teaches young Michael how to roll a joint and then share it: “Puff, puff, give” is his mantra. Patterson’s wit and insight couldn’t have found a better partner in creation than Rodriguez, who clearly gets him at every delightfully askew corner and turn. Even beyond that receptivity, Rodriguez is a master at staging a simple little story in a complex space, keeping the play’s short filmic scenes from flattening by leaving her performers onstage throughout, out of the light of whatever current scene is played out, reading magazines in the hospital’s waiting room or sitting vigil by Michael’s oversized sickbed. Every transition here is fluid and watchable, every actor patently willing to follow Rodriguez’s discerning guidance as their characters search for a cure for what ails us all.

Presented by Playwrights’ Arena and the Latino Theatre Company at Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., L.A. April 17–May 16. Fri.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. (213) 489-0994, ext. #107. www.thelatc.org.

[via Backstage]

Photo by Adam Blumenthal

“It was an angry poop,” exclaims Pamela (Vonessa Martin) to her husband David (Ramón de Ocampo). She and their 10-year old son Michael (an adorable Quinton Lopez) wait out the barrage of f-bombs from Gary (Johnny Giacalone), Pamela’s drunk brother who is cursing out his wife Carla (Diarra Kilpatrick) because she threw him out of the house.  Pamela and David agree to take Gary in, and in the ensuing intertwined episodes over a period of months (including one unforgettable mac & cheese & marijuana scene between Gary and Michael), we are exposed to the maladies that afflict these characters — from Pamela’s hypochondria, to Gary’s intoxication, to David’s libidinous yearnings, to Carla’s cocaine cravings.  Even Michael’s secretly sexual pediatrician Dr. Brown (Brendan O’Malley) and Carla’s donut-downing, Jesus-loving 12-step buddy Jeannie (Anita Dashiell) can’t shake their dis-ease, until Michael, the anchor in this sea of sickness, gets some bad news of his own.  The two-character scenes that dominate the piece showcase Erik Patterson’s edgy and hilarious play, and Diane Rodriguez’s muscular direction energizes its episodic nature, cleverly turning even the transitions into opportunities for storytelling, such as employing an onstage waiting room for offstage characters.  Sandra Burns’ flexible, minimalist set (with its wonderful robin-egg blue floor), appropriately illuminated by Adam Blumenthal’s harsh hospital fluorescence, provides the perfect backdrop for a talented cast that is solid across the board and keeps us laughing amidst the pain.

Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., downtown; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; thru May 16. (213) 489-0994, ext. #107.  http://www.thelatc.org A Playwright’s Arena and Latino Theatre Company Production.  (Mayank Keshaviah)

[via LA Weekly]

In this week’s edition of Behind the Scenes, Back Stage’s Jenelle Riley talks to award-winning playwright Erik Patterson about his new play “Sick.”

Patterson recently won the WGA Award for “Another Cinderella Story,” starring Selena Gomez and Jane Lynch of “Glee.”

Here, he discusses his new play, becoming a songwriter by accident, and hypochondria.

via Backstage