Leslie Caveny, Steve Nevil and Doug Haverty
Irish avant-garde playwright Samuel Beckett’s 1957 classic Endgame is the jumping off point of playwright Steve Nevil’s Welcome to Heretofore at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Nevil has set the action in a two-structure town in the middle of nowhere in the American West of the early 1880s. Nevil’s two main characters are the blind and confined to his chair Mr. Barker (Nevil) and Sno (Doug Haverty), a younger man who seems to be Barker’s caretaker. Sno checks in every day with Barker, who functions as the town’s Mayor and Sheriff. But nothing much happens in their lives—they have an unfinished checkers game from last winter. Bursting into the cabin from the howling wind outside is Fix (Leslie Caveny), just stopping by on her way to marry her mail-order-spouse in another town. Sno is fascinated by Fix and while Barker sleeps, he and the boisterous female bond. It’s nearly a case of love at first sight as the two find much common ground. Sno invites Fix to visit his nearby cabin, leaving Barker on his own for the first time in a long while. Is this the end of one friendship and the beginning of another. Existential questions indeed which are not readily answered in the swiftly moving 40 minute one-act under the tight direction of Elayne Heilveil. The trio of actors mesh together to make for an intriguing and fun outing.
http://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/4510