[Studio-Volunteers] An L.A. Story Fueled By Seductive Charm

[studio-volunteers at studiotheatre.org]

Theater
An L.A. Story Fueled By Seductive Charm

By Celia Wren
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, February 21, 2008; Page C02

How apt that decor resembling a tick-tack-toe board occupies the center of
the Studio Theatre's Stage 4 these days. The drama now housed there -- "All
That I Will Ever Be," Hollywood writer Alan Ball's slickly packaged fable
about sex and identity -- depicts a Los Angeles in which every relationship
is a play-to-a-draw power struggle.

Suitably enough, director Serge Seiden's taut and intermittently racy
production for the Studio's 2ndStage takes place on a set whose floor-level
panes of opaque white glass, frequently lighted from below, seem to invite a
high-stakes game of noughts and crosses.

The set, designed by Luciana Stecconi, is the centerpiece of an arena-style
staging that brings us disturbingly close to the play's mysterious central
character, Omar (Carlos Candelario), a hunky, young cellphone salesman of
undetermined nationality who moonlights as a prostitute. With his ambiguous
sexuality, exotic looks and elusive accent -- is it Egyptian? Iranian? --
Omar is well-positioned to exploit people's erotic obsessions, but his
business teeters when he falls for Dwight (Parker Dixon), a sweet, Noam
Chomsky-quoting rich boy still reeling from his mother's suicide.

The play explores this precarious situation and teases out the riddle of
Omar's background, in scenes that are elliptical and voyeuristic: hesitant
confidences, awkward confrontations, witty bickering, sex and talk about sex
(the production features nudity).

Ball, who created the HBO series "Six Feet Under" and wrote the
Oscar-winning screenplay for "American Beauty" (he also has previous play
credits), whisks in some arch humor on a couple of shopworn themes: the
shoddiness of the movie business and the cynicism, ruthlessness and
superficiality of the people who run it. "Hot doesn't cut it," sniffs
Cynthia (Leayne Freeman), Omar's movie-exec girlfriend. ". . . You have to
be perceived as being smart. That's why I wear these glasses that make me
look like a Dutch architect, even though I had Lasik surgery over a year
ago."

Seiden's cast deftly navigates this mingling of parody and sincerity.
Candelario is, by turns, compellingly dour, seductive, vulnerable and
sphinxlike: A sequence in which Omar, killing time, segues from one-handed
push-ups (what biceps!) to a campy belly dance, mirror in hand, speaks
volumes about the character's carefully maintained defenses. Dixon is
appealingly scruffy as the weed-smoking Dwight and, in a smaller role,
Richard Mancini draws a poignant picture of Raymond, an elderly businessman
who is better traveled -- and less gullible -- than most of Omar's clients.
John Kevin Boggs is pleasantly cartoonish as a movie mogul from hell.

As Cynthia, Freeman is icy and terrifically glamorous, whether in a pantsuit
or a gold sheath and matching heels (Ana Marie A. Salamat designed the
expressive costumes). Further evoking Tinseltown privilege, Stecconi's set
is periodically enriched by an item or two of pitch-perfect furniture, like
the restaurant table with its vase for a single orchid, or the hot tub that
turns out to be lurking beneath the glass floor. Erik Trester's sound
design -- sometimes Middle Eastern music, sometimes smooth jazz --
accentuates the play's concern with culture clash.

Given the glitzy setting, the sensational story and the savvy, wisecracking
dialogue, "All That I Will Ever Be" has the guilty-pleasure quotient of
Vanity Fair's Hollywood issue. Ultimately, though, there's something a
little glib about how Ball coordinates his motifs, which are tinged with a
self-help ethos ("We deserve to be loved, purely and unconditionally,"
Raymond tells Omar). The challenges of staking out an identity as a sexual
being; of being a foreigner in an insular America; and of seeking happiness
and fulfillment, generally, in a cutthroat modern world -- these themes lie
in tidy alignment, like a winning row of X's on a tick-tack-toe grid.

All That I Will Ever Be, by Alan Ball. Directed by Serge Seiden; lighting,
John Burkland. With McKenzie Bowling, Chris Dinolfo, Danny Gavigan and Steve
Nixon. Two hours.

Through March 9 at the Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW.

Call 202-332-3300 or visit http://www.studiotheatre.org.




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