Feature: John Perovich's UNEXPECTED

John Perovich's new play, unexpected, is enjoying a run at the Historic Downton Glendale's Brelby Theatre Company.

The play is a pastiche of Greek and Roman mythological love tales, crafted into a two-act contemporary entertainment. It is a piece about choice. This one loves that one, that one dumps this one, another runs off in fear, another chooses to go on, no matter what, and her progeny live, grow up and love in the wake of heartbreak which indelibly marks them and all who love them, leave them or are - most painfully of all - indifferent to them.

Perovich's piece breaks the fourth wall immediately, with a narrator who speaks directly to the audience, refers often to the seated patrons and, at times, joins them in the house.

The narrator is a character called The Merchant - no other name is ever revealed for him - and he tells most of the tale and plays a main character. We meet, along the way, characters we recognize as Orpheus and Eurydice, Pyramus, Thisbe, Cupid, Psyche and Venus/Aphrodite (though she's a male actor in drag, and it's a kooky portrait, to say the least).

The relationships in unexpected take surprising turns - thus, the title. The story follows a Hero's Journey trajectory, but remains unpredictable, which allows for some marvelous exchanges. There is genuine pathos in the play, however Perovich's skillful construct doesn't allow the fable to be bogged down in sentimentality.

With Marina Sharpe, who plays a ukulele and sings with entrancing elegance in Brelby's production, Perovich has composed some charming tunes.

The big challenge in the story - the catalyst of the great catastrophe, the obstacle between the characters and their love and happiness - is the fierce, relentless, mother character named, simply, Ann. The father of Ann's three daughters abandoned them all years before. As with most mythological characters - and, indeed with most of us mere mortals - such loss and the grief that follows shapes us, for better or worse, into the people we ultimately become.

Carolyn Platt McBurney plays the role in its world premiere. I asked her, in a brief post-show interview, how she found her way to stand up for such a ferocious character.

"Love, to Ann, is all-consuming," McBurney said. "Her obsession with protecting her girls from the bitterness of betrayal is of epic proportions - much like the Greek mythology on which these daughters' stories were based. I believe that Ann truly loves [the father of her children] - never stopped loving him, but forgiveness is a bitter pill to swallow and as long as he was estranged, she was manic about suitors. This story is a fairy tale, and, as such, I have to believe that when he redeemed himself, she made a choice to "mostly" forgive him and move forward. This strong woman decided to make the most of the years they had left."

Ultimately, unexpected is a bittersweet tale that exposes the deep, dark underbelly of humankind's myriad expressions of "love," and the choices that make - and break - us all.

UNEXPECTED plays at Brelby through June 10. Purchase tickets at Brelby.com

All Photos by Shelby Maticic

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