Some of the tender moments and animated staging in South Coast Repertory’s world premiere staging of “You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World!” are enough to remind how good it is to find the doors open to live performance again on the theater’s mainstage.
Until now, SCR’s primary Segerstrom Stage has been open this calendar year for only a dozen performances of a show organized through an outsider presenter.
Having formally downsized productions from 13 to 9 annually due to economic shifts, the theater also suffered a January storm partially blowing the roof off a noncampus storage building, damaging the theater’s stored props and costumes.
Joel de la Fuente and Anna LaMadrid appear in a scene from “You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World,” playing at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through May 3. (Photo by Robert Huskey) River Gallo appears in a scene from “You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World,” playing at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through May 3. (Photo by Robert Huskey) Joel de la Fuente and Alysia Reiner appear in a scene from “You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World,” playing at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through May 3. (Photo by Robert Huskey) From left, Alysia Reiner, River Gallo and Joel de la Fuente appear in a scene from “You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World,” playing at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through May 3. (Photo by Robert Huskey) Alysia Reiner and Sharon Omi appear in a scene from “You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World,” playing at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through May 3. (Photo by Robert Huskey) Joel de la Fuente and Rafael Goldstein appear in a scene from “You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World,” playing at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through May 3. (Photo by Robert Huskey) From left, Sharon Omi, Alysia Reiner, Anna LaMadrid, Joel de la Fuente, River Gallo and Rafael Goldstein appear in a scene from “You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World,” playing at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through May 3. (Photo by Robert Huskey) Show Caption1 of 7Joel de la Fuente and Anna LaMadrid appear in a scene from “You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World,” playing at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through May 3. (Photo by Robert Huskey) ExpandAs a result, playwright Keiko Green’s new one-act, 100-minute play — which launches the annual Pacific Playwrights Festival with readings, staged presentations and a second-stage production of another new work, “The Staircase” — is a welcome sight.
During last year’s festival, “You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World!” received an energizing semistaged presentation.
And the well-designed technical production here confirms the theater’s tradition of lovingly fostering new and ambitious work.
This said, the new show also reminds that playwriting ambitions come with creative risk that doesn’t necessarily fully pay off.
Green’s play presents an interspersion of personal and worldly themes: a small family and others are buffeted by the father’s final days with pancreatic cancer while their experiences are amplified by a larger, strident polemic laying out worldwide climate catastrophe.
The material sounds — and is — dire, but it is presented with comic brushstrokes that are embellished by intermittent flourishes of surreal imagery, manifested by the father’s emotional and medicinal swings.
The play’s beginning is strong, the parents absorbing the heartbreaking news with a compelling early moment as they collapse in a communal, mutually propelling hysterical bout of laughter.
Green’s narrative technique is effective. The family’s early 20s transgender son (River Gallo) acts as an able narrator as well as a character trying to fashion a personal and professional life while the nuclear family is abruptly coming to an end.
The father (Joel de la Fuente) proceeds through the remains of his existence with an elevated consciousness and preoccupation with the planet’s health as a whole. The mother (Alysia Reiner) manifests ever shifting wellings of grief as she grasps for emotional survival.
Overall, though, as characters swell and events cascade, director Zi Alikhan’s six-person cast struggles on a scene-by-scene basis to carry ahead through the play’s widely ranging tonal demands.
At points the play is like observing an emotional bounce-house with tangential characters bounding on and off through brief, sketch-like flights of fancy. The show’s potency is muddled.
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The penultimate ending is emotionally stirring, but to get there the fourth wall is broken to include the audience. While this is an earnest, powerfully shared moment, it also feels like another theatrical layering of too much-ness.
Perhaps the strongest takeaway from the roiling energies in place in “You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World!” is that theater itself can be messy — sometimes wonderfully so — and it’s satisfying to encounter it alive and kicking once again in Costa Mesa.
‘You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World!’
Rating: 3 stars (out of a possible 4)
Where: Segerstrom Stage, South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa
When: Through May 3; 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m., Sundays. An additional performance has been added at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 29
Tickets: $35-$114
Information: 714-708-5555; scr.org
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