Violet (Katherine Lee) on viola, Ayodele (Tonoccus McClain) on cello, and Roger (Michael Lamb) on violin enter and take their places in front of their music stands. Roger places a flower on the vacant chair to his right for their recently deceased founder and first violinist, Leonard, Roger’s husband. They start to play a requiem but are interrupted by their brash manager Hassim (Bong Cabrera) who has brought recent Julliard grad Kiki (Melissa Folzenlogen) in to complete their string quartet so they can keep their lucrative bookings for weddings, cruise ships, bar mitzvahs. So begins Cle Holly’s new play Four at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. The remaining trio had resolved to disband if they ever lost a member, but money is nice and so is companionship. It’s just one rehearsal, then three-months of bookings and then…Kiki begins to blend in well.
Holly’s play may be too ambitious for a Fringe outing. It’s a very choppy script, consisting of seemingly 1001 one or two-minute scenes. The actors seem to spend more time entering and exiting the stage than in saying any dialogue. Director John Coppola seems to be more of a traffic cop than anything else. There is not enough time in those short scenes to develop the characters. It’s also a bit awkward that only Kiki plays an instrument; the others mime holding and playing theirs.
https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/9825