Review: Would You TELL MR. POULOS Your Deepest Secrets?

Written and directed by two New Yorkers, TELL MR. POULOS, written by Donald Wollner and directed by Page Burkholder, is having its world premiere, produced by WildTown Productions at the Dorie Theatre at the Complex in Hollywood. Billed as a comedy, which might be more true to East Coast sensibilities, it honestly plays more like a drama with the occasional laughs far and few between.

It's a story perhaps all to true today. At the beginning, we meet Jimmy Meadows (Beresford Bennett) and his wife Lisa (Yetta Gottesman) as he arrives home from the office with a box filled with his possessions, informing her he has lost his job after 10 years of loyal service. While the reason is never fully explained, you get the sense he was pushed out for reasons he would rather not admit. Poor Lisa is beside herself with worry since she only works part time and they have a very young son (only heard off stage), and now she will need to let the babysitter go and rent out the child's room.

From there, Jimmy's once stable life spirals into ridiculousness. His wife rents out the baby's room for the extra income but still pursues him for sex whenever she can. Jimmy is just not interested, and taking care of his son is a burden since they don't like each other much. He goes on several job interviews, with Kina Bermudez playing each of the interviewers, a feat that requires many rapid fire costume and accent changes, each one remarkably different, often adding in the much-needed laughs. I especially loved her hospital receptionist who has seen and heard it all.

But the job interviews lead only to degradation for poor Jimmy with rejections mounting and his ego shot. Aloof from his wife, he complicates matters by taking up with Isabelle, an admiring, beautiful, but deeply disturbed young woman (Lindsey Andersen in an emotional tour-de-force performance). Her attention-grabbing breakdown scene feels totally real and not in the least bit forced, making you really understand Jimmy's desire to take care of her so she can heal. But at what price?

Jimmy's lonely and frustrated wife is a nurse in a senior care facility, angry that her out-of-work husband can't even find the time to fix their broken toilet. Feeling neglected and needing to feel desired, she enters into a bizarre non-physical relationship with a 90-year-old patient under her care. We never meet Mr. Bernstein, a former rabbi whose Hebrew sounds threatening and angry to Lisa, but her in depth descriptions of him certainly make his presence felt.

Into all this turmoil comes the enigmatic and apparently deaf Mr. Poulos (Travis Michael Holder who manages to steal scenes without uttering a word), a quiet man who rents a room in the Meadows' apartment to assist them in staying afloat while Jimmy looks for work. But who is he really since he never speaks and just sits at the kitchen table all day reading Greek language newspapers? But that does not seem to matter to Jimmy and Lisa, who both start confiding their deepest secrets to Mr. P in private, hoping the experience will assist them in figuring out what to do about their mixed up lives. It's cheaper than hiring a shrink, of course, even though the self-centered couple seems to only be concerned about their own needs and not their marriage.

But when Mr. P reveals he does hear and understand everything being said to him, he lets them know exactly how he feels about their actions which as pulling them apart. But will it do any good? Their emotional struggles continue, played out in the small black box theater with just two tables and five chairs as scenery. Making each situation more realistic are the appropriate sounds designed by Bill Campbell and attention-focusing lighting by Rebecca Raines.

Director Page Burkholder allows us to see inside the hearts and souls of Wollner's characters as they share the trials and tribulations of trying to just make it through each day without falling completely apart. The 90-minute running time passes quickly, but I hope at future performances someone in the lobby will remind patrons exiting other shows to keep their voices down and not disrupt some of the most emotional scenes in this play taking place behind non-soundproof doors.

TELL MR. POULOS performances continue on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 5pm through October 25. General admission tickets are $10 and may be obtained online at http://wildtown.org/ or by calling (866) 811-4111. The Dorie Theatre at the Complex is located at 6476 Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, 90038.

Production photos by Rick Ziegler