Review: HOLLYWOOD ARMS at Oyster Mill Playhouse

Carol Burnett is one of America's favorite comedians, and has been for decades; she's remembered fondly long after her general retirement from stage and mostly small screen. She's always been loved for a combination of riotous humor and a gentle but pointed poking of family dynamics - that latter, including in television show MAMA'S FAMILY, in no small part based upon her own chaotic life, particularly in her youth with her own mother. Eventually she and daughter Carrie Hamilton decided to put that story together into a semi-autobiographical play, HOLLYWOOD ARMS.

HOLLYWOOD ARMS is a series of vignettes about a grandmother and granddaughter and the intermittently present, wildly negligent, daughter and mother who put the two together as a unit to seek out her own, failing, career as a writer. It's meticulously told - perhaps a little too meticulously, as it seems to have scenes in it that are there just for their own sake, as if to say, "this is what happened and we're making sure you know." However, it was clearly a labor of love for the two women, and this may counterbalance the failure of editing and solid structure to some extent.

At Oyster Mill Playhouse, Oyster Mill veteran Aliza Bardfeld plays Nanny, a Texan matron transplanted to Hollywood to reunite her granddaughter Helen (Quinn Starrett as the younger, Miranda Baldys as her older counterpart) with her wayward would-be Hollywood reporter mother, Louise (Kristie Starrett). It isn't a bed of roses at the Hollywood Arms apartments - sometimes you're lucky that there's a bed. Landlady Dixie a very funny Catherine Tyson-Osif) tries to hold the place - and sometimes this family - together in two apartments, then one, as Helen grows up and as her unsuccessful mother deals with rejection, men, and alcohol.

What holds the slightly disjointed and cumbersome collection of scenes together is director Carol McDonough's grip on the reins and Bardfeld's performance, as well as Baldys' occasional narration. Bardfeld is in nearly every scene - with Helen, with Louise, with the men in Louise's life, and in a marvelous episode of the family apartment being raided for their making book on horse races in a bid to increase income. Bardfeld's faked deathbed scene to rattle the police at the door is a performance with which to be reckoned. While she's usually a great pleasure to watch on stage, this is an exceptional moment.

How exact the story is to Burnett's own youth isn't clear, and isn't important. It's a fable she and Hamilton wanted to bring to the public, and it's a tale of love, of sacrifice on all sides, and some small degree of redemption, as Helen and Nanny conspire to rescue Helen's little sister Alice (Jillian Berry) from Louise as she sinks downhill. Helen's future isn't assured as the story fades out, but she's learned a few things from Nanny that her mother never did, leaving the audience in hope. If Burnett is indeed Helen, then we are assured that all ended well in some regards.

This is one of those plays that the Oyster Mill stage, its volunteers, and its casts excel at, and from direction to acting to set, all is well. Through July 22. Up following, TAKING LEAVE in August. Oyster Mill is a lovely place to be on a summer evening, so it's worth your time to be out there and enjoy the shows and the breezes outside at intermission. Visit oystermill.com for tickets and information.