The Red Riding Hood fable as serial killer drama? That’s ‘Grimly Handsome’
The boundaries between human civilization and the animal kingdom become very blurry indeed in “Grimly Handsome,” an appropriately titled grim fairy tale from Santa Monica’s longtime purveyor of psychically unsettling theater, City Garage.
Julia Jarcho’s contemporary take on the Red Riding Hood fable has three interconnected story lines that unfold in straightforward chronology, but their deeper meaning remains tantalizingly— or annoyingly — cryptic, depending on your threshold for ambiguity.
Stylized, visual tableaus take precedence over naturalistic action in director Frédérique Michel’s and designer Charles A. Duncombe’s deliberately static presentation. In a sly update of the archetypal dangerous forest, the play begins in an urban Christmas tree lot run by a sinister one-eyed Eastern European man (Andrew Loviska) and his recently arrived (and better-looking) compatriot (Anthony Sannazzaro). Despite — or perhaps because of — news reports of unsolved serial killings, a young customer (Lindsay Plake) becomes unwisely attracted to their alien allure.
City Garage’s signature scarlet-and-black color palette is a natural fit for the Red Riding Hood overlay, with the prey clad in bright scarlet and the lupine predators in black with fur-lined caps. The color scheme continues as the performers transition to the second narrative, in which Loviska and Sannazzaro play detectives working the serial killer case and Plake assumes dual roles as their prime suspect and the wife of one cop having an affair with the other.
Lest we grow lulled into a sense of the familiar hard-boiled police procedural, a third segment has the cast don masks and bushy tails for commentary between raccoon-like scavengers who give voice to the baser impulses that lie beneath the veneer of civilization. What it all means is anybody’s guess, but it proves that those “become an animal” exercises in acting class can really come in handy.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
‘Grimly Handsome’
Where: City Garage at Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave. Building T1, Santa Monica
When: 8 p.m. Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays; ends Feb. 26
Tickets: $20 (Sundays are pay what you can)
Information: (310) 453-9939 or www.citygarage.org
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
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