Review: FOSTERED at Pacific Resident Theatre

Fostered is a must-see world premiere comedy at Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice.  The spirit of silliness and fun is bubbly and infectious.  How often do we get to enjoy something sexy, smart, funny and effervescent, like a classic, delicious Woody Allen sex comedy?  The roars of audience laughter and applause never let up, and personally, I laughed so hard, I almost fell out of my chair.  

With pitch perfect direction by acclaimed TV comedy director Andrew D. Weyman and a dream cast, Fostered is an absolute smash.  You do not want to miss this one.

It is a true pleasure to see something as light-hearted, silly and madcap as Fostered at Pacific Resident Theatre.  Under the sublime artistic direction of Marilyn Fox, Pacific Resident Theatre is a magical place, doing luminous, exquisite productions of classics as well as exciting, bold new works.  Pacific Resident Theatre is one of Los Angeles’ great cultural treasures.  

Fostered feels especially poignant since director Andrew D. Weyman, his wife actress Terry Davis and actor Satiar Pourvasei, as well as other members of the Pacific Resident Theatre company, lost their homes in the recent Los Angeles wildfires.   There is a resilience and a boldness, a beauty of heart in this production that feels deeply meaningful.

This new comedy by playwright Chaya Doswell celebrates the love and insanity at the heart of family.  Karen (Terry Davis) and Sandy (Tony Pasqualini) Foster are a couple in their golden years who are looking forward to selling their home in Scarsdale, New York and moving to Hawaii to spend their last years in carefree bliss on the beach.  But just as everything is coming together for Karen and Sandy to begin their dream life in the tropics, it seems like their four adult children (Katy Downing, Jillian Lee Garner, Hope Lauren, and Taubert Nadalini) have other plans.  Their picture perfect lives are unraveling — marriages and well-tended careers and crazy roommate situations imploding as they all come suddenly rushing back to the family home. 

Midnight sandwiches are made, vodka is spilled, a rifle is raided from a back closet, and many family secrets come tumbling out, including a particularly juicy one that Karen and Sandy are hiding themselves.  The results are uproarious, hilarious, irreverent, and utterly delightful.  I loved every second of the madness.

One of the pleasures of Fostered is seeing many ridiculously talented actors I have adored in other plays here united on stage.  Fostered has a dream cast.  I praised Taubert Nadalini’s “monumental gonzo commitment” and “authentic, believable earnestness and utter comedic insanity” in The Angel Next Door at The Laguna Playhouse, and Nadalini brings his comic virtuosity and wonderful physicality to the part of closeted, tightly wound Jeremy Foster. 

I adored Satiar Pourvasei’s “oodles of charm, and an impressive tonal range from debonair and irritatingly cocky to introspective and tender to wild and balls-out goofy” as Bond avatar Simon Cross in The Spy Who Went Into Rehab at Pacific Resident Theatre.  In Fostered, Satiar Pourvasei is comic genius as the mysterious and irrepressibly frisky refugee Shafeek.  Shafeek and his robe completely need their own show.

I praised Tony Pasqualini’s “electrifying, monumentally great performance” in the riveting social drama Lines in the Dust at the Matrix Theatre, playing a conflicted, racist private investigator.  Here Pasqualini reveals a completely different side of his vast talent as hilarious, affable, richly layered comedic dad Sandy Foster.  A gesture Pasqualini makes zipping up his fly, post fellatio, coming out of the downstair family bathroom is one of the funniest things I have seen on stage.  Tony Pasqualini has great chemistry and inexpressible poignancy with the brilliant, devastatingly funny Terry Davis. 

One of the hardest things to create on stage is a believable couple with years of history, and Davis and Pasqualini create an adorable couple with every sweet and bittersweet cookie crumble of love on display: exasperation, tenderness, disappointment, generosity, freaky kinkiness, comfort, heartbreak, and well-seasoned intimacy.

As always, the stage design by Rich Rose is triumphant, subtle, and completely immersive.  He is simply one of the best scenic designers working today, capable of profound visual storytelling and pure magic.  I am still mulling over the truly gorgeous, intricate, spell-binding set that Rose created for A Bespoke Overcoat, a set that had an entire mood and life of its own.

The only occasional snags in Fostered come in the writing.  Playwright Chaya Doswell has beautiful comedic instincts and an enviable spirit of mischief and wackiness, but in Fostered, she needs to develop more control, maturity, and tonal sensitivity.  

Hiram Murray adds humor, nuance, shading, warmth and realism to the role of Daniel, a misfire in the writing.  I have observed no shortage of men who undermine their partners, but I have never encountered a man who could orchestrate entire romantic relationships, lasting years, purely for the purpose of masterminding a promotion. On an ideological level, while it is certainly a provocative, anti-trendy choice, the backstabbing rivalry between people of color and feminism tastes sour.

Fostered’s ending, which we would expect would bring more humor and delight, instead lands like the hiss of a deflating balloon.  I loved the aching, wise, bittersweet, almost unbearable poignancy that lead actors Tony Pasqualini and Terry Davis brought to it.  But it is a baffling choice by playwright Chaya Doswell that underserves her lovable characters.  

Any couple that succeeds in raising four beautiful, intelligent, vibrant children, is all set to pursue their dream life in the tropics for retirement, and is blissfully experimenting with a generously pansexual refugee, should get more than a sad, solo microwaved burrito at the end.  Please, let us hand Karen and Sandy their tiki drinks with cute umbrellas and let them enjoy their happy ending frolicking with Shafeek with on the beach.  The Fosters deserve it.

Photos by Zachary Kanner

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