17.10.13

tylerr pery is no jesus, but he’s still a superstar (at TFPO)


Do the performing arts have an equivalent to dive bars? If so, Santa Monica’s Promenade Playhouse – tucked in a Third Street crevice next to a soap shop – surely must fit the bill. Lest you think that a condemnation, consider that it’s precisely in such raw threadbare spaces that one finds the greatest potential for surprise. We expect sophisticated theatre from marquee theatres with refined architecture. With dive theatres, we leave ourselves deliciously vulnerable to the genuine risks and rewards of discovery.

Such was the case a few years ago with Small Office, a cozy little cubicle dramedy written by Jeremy Evans – a Second City Conservatory graduate whose credits include performance at major comedy, improvisation, and theatrical venues – that offered a smart, often hilarious portrait of personal office politics. It was ideally suited to the space, authentic and genuine, showcasing skilled performers enacting a script that demonstrates the writer’s craft that led Evans to the semi-finals in the Edward Burns Feature Script Contest.

Fitting, then, that I should return to the Playhouse for Evans’s latest piece, the hour-long musical comedy Tylerr Pery Superstar. This time we find Evans in a...

Read the rest of my review of Tylerr Pery Superstar at THE FRONT PAGE ONLINE.

And go support independent theatre.

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