It's all about color. It's about having an awareness of and appreciation for the vivid moments of your life and the brightness of possibility. It's what the young anticipate and the old remember. It's about the color of a unicorn. And the endurance of love.
The play is “Past Time,” playwright Padraic Duffy's paean to the color of emotions and how we perceive them.
Lou (the extraordinary French Stewart) is obsessed with unicorns. Miniature unicorns that he paints lovingly in colors that he has provided with fanciful names. It's an exercise that he has inveigled his friend James (Leon Russom) to participate in as well, albeit reluctantly.
James is an older man, a bit restless, but still happily in love with his wife, Delilah (Ruth Silveira), a feisty woman who works in a shop called Candles 'n Stuff. She, understandably, reacts with vehemence when Lou sets up a kiosk right in front of her store and calls it Unicorns 'n Things.
James and Delilah have a grandson, Chris (Josh Weber) who is so awkward and tongue-tied that he might be suspected of having Asperger's syndrome. Nevertheless, he has fallen in love with Meredith (Julia Griswold), a girl whom he has somehow managed to date eight times. But they have been quirky dates and she is about to throw in the towel, even while he is pleading for just one more chance.
She finally agrees and he rushes home to his grandfather for help. He recognizes that James is adept in the ways of love and would easily be able to express to Meredith the depths of his (Chris') feelings for her. And so he devises a plan in which James would “become” Chris and would meet with Meredith for that crucial ninth date.
James, white-haired and bearded, meets with Meredith and begins to woo her as a stand-in for Chris, and she is enchanted. They continue to meet until Delilah enters the picture. Then Delilah “becomes” Meredith to James' Chris, and as confusing as it sounds, it all works out in the end. And, as you might guess, happily, too. James confides to Delilah that “being young is exhausting” and confesses that “I'm only me because you're you.”
And Lou says, “Just because something is imaginary doesn't mean it's not real.”
Even as he and James paint their unicorns in a scene that is a bit too long, French Stewart is a marvel to watch. Just as wonderful as he was in 2012 as the lead in “Stoneface: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Buster Keaton”, where he maintained his stony, emotionless mien throughout the play, he again dominates the stage as the extravagantly expressive artist in “Past Time.”
The rest of the cast, ably directed by Jeremy Aldridge, manages to make sense, and even logic, out of this sweet, slightly implausible fantasy. And DeAnne Millais' cluttered stage works well as the reflection of their collective whimsy.
This play is a world premiere and the sixth of Padraic Duffy's plays to be produced by Sacred Fools Theater Company. It is being presented at The Lillian Theatre, 1076 N. Lillian Way, in Hollywood Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. through March 26. There will be no performance this Sunday, Feb. 28, the Company notes, because they and their potential audience will presumably all be at home watching the Oscars.
