Review: DREAMLAND Fails to Find Its Footing at NoHo Arts Center

Dreamland, an off-book staged musical that played for three performances at the NoHo Arts Center, is a work 10 years in the making, according to director Robert Arnold. Book, music and lyrics come from father-daughter team John Francis Smith and Asia Ray Smith, with actress-daughter Smith taking on the lead role, and while that setup sounds appealing and unique, unfortunately, that's where the originality ends.

The main trouble with Dreamland is that it doesn't know what it wants to be. Billed as the tale of a Midwestern girl who aspires to become an actress and ends up mixing with sordid Hollywood types who show her that dreams shouldn't always come true - what happens on stage only supports this in theory.

Our heroine Mary (Asia Ray Smith) is, indeed, a Midwest waitress who dreams of becoming an actress, but she's not the driving force of the production. In fact, she's pretty much relegated to the sidelines as a passive, instead of active, lead.

This is made plain early on when a popular soap opera comes to town to shoot its finale and sets up auditions for extras. Mary does not audition, instead choosing to stay at her father's diner to wait tables because it's going to be a "busy day." Conversely, her go-get-'em cousin and fellow waitress Shelly (a delightful Alana Gospodnetich) weasels her way out of work, attends the audition, and gets the gig. This makes Shelly the star of the show - both within the story and on stage - and leaves viewers scratching their heads: whose story is this? If Mary isn't moving Heaven and Earth to get to the audition, then there needs to be a heroic and believable reason why - the diner isn't about to go belly-up, after all (hint, hint). If it were, Mary would read as stoic and self-sacrificing. Instead, she comes off as whiney and all talk.

This disconnect from a convincing and logical character structure plagues the production at every turn. Mary skirts around the stage like a ghost, yet, after three seconds of speaking to soap actor Todd (Aaron Scheff), he's completely smitten by her and wants to whisk her away to Tinseltown. There is Mary's drunk uncle Simon, who wanders through the production without any purpose (save a song celebrating alcoholism as the cure to Mary's inability to act on her desires), and Mary's fiancée Jeff (Tyler Scherer) - who should play as her down-home conscience or obstacle - is a mere shadow. A ballad between Jeff and Mary is designed to make us feel their love and root for them, but there's no follow-through on the relationship and Jeff ends up wandering around like a pensive bumpkin, disgusted by Hollywood whoredom.

That's one half of the show - the Midwest part. The other half attempts to be an exposé on the vapid Hollywood elite, something that has been done to death and finds no new ground in this production (and smacks far too similar to the 1991 film Soapdish). That said, the soap actors are the most entertaining part of the show, even though none of them are advancing the plot.

TV rivals Sierra (an on-point Adrieanne Perez) and Ashley (a splendid Tanya Wilkins) get some solid digs in, playing caricatures we're supposed to recognize. Ashley likes our heroine Mary, but is also her timid foil; Ashley has been trying to land co-star Todd for years, but when he becomes smitten with Mary, Ashley throws in the towel early on, leaving her a neutered character. Sierra loathes Ashley and Mary (she loathes everyone) and she, too, is Mary's foil, making a play for Jeff and getting him. This illicit tryst occurs off stage, however, and is never given the dramatic weight it deserves. And cousin Shelly, who threw Mary under the bus at the auditions, is also Mary's foil. Three foils against a protagonist who wishy-washily somehow ends up in Hollywood and becomes the star of the soap through no help or hindrance from any of them.

The show aims to be a satire, but even satire has rules. Many of these unfocused elements can be remedied, of course, but the biggest hurdle the production faces is that it feels as if it were beamed in from the 1950s, without a true note struck against modern Hollywood or for the contemporary Midwest. The main goal of most of the women characters is getting the guy, after all, an antiquated idea that would ring false to any serious actress. The one exception is Shelly, who takes the casting couch route because she really does want a career - and yet, by the end of the show, she is punished for it in the extreme.

The final moments of the production are a bit of a smack, however. After two hours of getting Mary to Hollywood, and sitting through a slew of songs that educate us on the politics of the industry - including a lambasting of women who have breast implants (in 2016, is this still comedic fodder?) - the drama has finally reached its peak and all characters are set to crash and burn. How will they get out of their predicaments in only five minutes? Well, since Mary is from Kansas, we're to be contented that the preceding mash-up mirrors that of her fictional friend Dorothy. It is titled Dreamland, after all, and in dreams, you're not allowed to be upset by a low-down cheat. At least not more than 15 minutes after you wake up.

Photo Credit: Beatrice Victor