Pauline Adamek
Gentle readers,
This week my theater review for the LA Weekly is of Love Struck, now playing at the Macha Theatre in West Hollywood.
Click here to go to the LA Weekly’s theater page and scroll down towards the middle.
~ OR ~
You can read the full version here!!
Happy reading!
Love Struck.
Odalys Nanin’s vanity play, a short two-hander which she wrote, produced, directed and stars in opposite Tricia Cruz, strives for the pinnacle of situation comedy and never makes it to base camp. Abysmal imitations of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo throughout (not just when they are “playing” the famous TV duo while rehearsing a comedy sketch) has you wondering why she didn’t just call her play “I Love Latinas.”
Nanin desperately needs a director’s vision (and acting lessons) to coax these unfocused, undeveloped scenes into some sort of shape that resembles a play. Blurry, nondescript news footage (is it of the Vietnam War? Oh, it’s the LA Riots!) briefly opens the show before the two buxom women run onstage in their bras.
Randomly jumping from dialogue to self-conscious soliloquies to a reality TV video moment to flashbacks – complete with clichéd harp sound effect – Nanin charts the rocky road of her three-year romance with a fellow struggling actress.
LA lesbians deserve better than this.
Love Struck: Odalys Nanin’s story of Latinas in love.
Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.
Continues through Sept. 23.
1107 N. Kings Road,
West Hollywood,
323-654-0680.
Terry Morgan
