Sol Mason (all photos by Jenny Graham)
Paul Sand, the actor, writer and director who first came to attention with the Chicago’s famed Second City troupe over 60 years ago, has written and directed a new play, The Pilot Who Crashed the Party, receiving its World Premiere at Hollywood’s Broadwater Main Stage. Sands bills the play as an off-beat homage to the drawing room dramas of the ‘30s. Pilot gets off to a fun start with a small group of friends gathered at Sally’s (Jacqueline Wright) Santa Monica mountaintop mansion to celebrate her 50th birthday. As the lights go up on Jeff G. Rack’s well-appointed and elaborate (for The Broadwater) scenic design, the friends are playing a murder mystery game after dinner. It’s a dark and stormy night (courtesy of Azra King-Abadi’s lightening highlighted lighting design, Shoshana Kuttners’s thunderous sound design and Fritz Davis’s never relenting projection design of torrential rainfall). The thunder is momentarily quieted by the droning of a small aircraft and then, crash, boom—a wing appears on the dining table and a dazed and possibly concussed pilot (Sol Mason) appears in the doorway, before collapsing.
After being revived and settled comfortably on a chaise in the library, the guests take turns making sure the Pilot, who doesn’t know his name or how he got there, does not fall asleep, advice found in an old medical book by Sally. One by one, they regale the Pilot with stories from their lives, true or embellished. Sally lived in Brazil for years where she had a married Brazilian cowboy lover. Laura (Claudia Ferri) is a film star desperate to make a morning audition despite being stranded by the storm. Ilo (Francis C. Edemobi), Laura’s bisexual boyfriend strikes out when he attempts to seduce the Pilot by standing on his head. Barbara (Debra Lane), who has catered the party, captivates the Pilot with her operatic voice and a strange tale of driving in a deluge of frogs. Daniel (Lee Boek), one of Sally’s oldest friends, has been suspicious of the Pilot since his mysterious appearance. He reveals that he has trained assassins in the past and thinks the Pilot has been sent to dispatch him. And then there are the Violinist (Yannie Lam) and the Cellist (Chris Rorrer) who, not only provide the perfect background music for whatever scene is transpiring but, also at times attempt to inject themselves into the plot while imbibing the wine left out on the airplane wing.
Sol Mason and Jacqueline Wright
Sand’s director’s notes explain the play is his attempt to understand actors’ need to project themselves onto others. The amnesiac Pilot is virtually a tabula rasa. It is an interesting idea but not fully fleshed out in a totally satisfying way. The play is about 30 minutes too long—some of the stories drag on and on as does Sally’s eventual and successful seduction of the Pilot just before his wife (Marcia Lynn Anthony) shows up to collect him. Sand has written more character sketches than actual characters and the thin plot meanders on to the final curtain. The action is not very dramatic, nor is it very humorous. There are a few gentle laughs but mostly it comes across as actors looking for a play.
www.onstage411.com/pilot