Photo by Maria Baranova
It’s monsoon season in Arizona and all the rain in Phoenix can’t wash away the crazy that is conjured in All For One Theater’s production of Monsoon Season. This darkly funny play, written by Lizzie Vieh and directed by Kristin McCarthy Parker, is practically two distinct solo acts that intertwine in an interesting way. Like two sides of the same coin, both complement each other in the end.
IT specialist Danny (Richard Thieriot) is on the brink of exhaustion. His wife just kicked him out of the house, his four-year-old daughter doesn’t want to see him, even the hermit crab he bought as a pet keeps hiding from him. He can’t catch a break. To keep himself sane, he spouts facts about the Juarez Cartel and visits the strip club next door to his new apartment. Conversely, the blaring neon lights are keeping him awake and he can’t afford blinds despite moonlighting as an Uber driver. To compensate, he takes microsleeps (kind of like a spontaneous nap), which can occur at any moment.
Julia (Therese Plaehn) is a makeup artist and beauty vlogger (her YouTube channel is called “Pretty As Fuck”). She is a hot mess whose life only gets messier once her husband moves out and her drug dealer boyfriend moves in, feeding her Adderall habit. She laments that she wasted her good years on her loser husband, so she hooks “boy toy” Shane. The only problem is that Shane is kind of abusive and people keep showing up at her house to buy drugs. Soon, she starts hallucinating that there are strange birds in her backyard. It’s enough to drive someone to do something crazy.
The performances by both actors are great, especially when they play to other characters that are invisible to the audience. The nuances of Danny and Julia as people who are spiraling, but who are also in denial about it, are played out really well and to humorous effect. What could have been a really bleak story turns out kind of sweet, in a sick and twisted way, thanks to the script and the ability of the actors to make these characters somewhat likeable.
If I have one complaint it’s that the constantly changing neon lights are annoying and distracting. Of course, this is the point of the neon lights in the play. They represent the strip club lights outside Danny’s window, making him unable to sleep and leading him down a dark path. Aside from that bit of set design (You-Shin Chen), the rest of it is pretty cool, especially at the end when blacklights make everything look like a surreal dream.
I like to think that the play being set during monsoon season is a nod to how weather can make people a little nutty. When it’s raining like crazy in the desert, where it doesn’t normally rain that much, it can seem like things are a little unnatural. Like during a really bad storm, people do things they may not do otherwise. But after that storm, when the rain passes, the sun always comes out and makes things seem just a little bit better.
Monsoon Season is playing through November 23 at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater.