STAGE REVIEWS : OPEN FESTIVAL : ‘High Priestess’ Lost in Looniness
A title like “Celia: High Priestess of Shimkin” bodes trouble right off the top, and this ecology comedy (more sensibly subtitled “An Aquatic Fable”) sinks in depths of murky looniness.
The production launched the Open Festival’s environmentally themed Green Festival, but the collegiate tone of this show’s humor and its hyper acting style are wearing. And strident: Some characters in the matchboxy Carpet Company Stage shriek till your ears ring.
Playwrights Tony Forkush and Liane Schirmer (who also co-star) set their madness in a future, drought-stricken L.A. Basin, complete with a corrupt Church of Simultology and the life-saving, rain-bearing El Nino Pescado, a mythical half-human, half-fish (the bizarre Michael Morrissey in snorkel, rubber suit and fins).
Although he appears only briefly, the hilarious and deceptively polished actor Gary Ellenberg steals the show with his inflated lingual panache as the tongue-twisting Maestro Simpatico Verdad.
But this mackerel of a production is overbaked. Sean Fenton directed.
At 5262 Pico Blvd., Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., through Sept. 15. $12. (213) 871-6890.
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