The Sea Will Crush You, If You Don't Know How to Swim

Last weekend I caught the Rude Guerrilla Theater Company's production of Nocturne by Adam Rapp. It's maybe the best play I've seen all year: dark and tragic, involving and moving. It's a monologue-play -- here expanded to include brief speaking roles for two additional actors -- in which an unnamed narrator simply and eloquently describes the deterioration of his family following a tragic accident when he was a teenager. Scott Barber's performance in the lead role is note-perfect, never overplaying scenes which in lesser hands could devolve into melodrama. What keeps the play from becoming a depressing morass is both the inherent wit of Rapp's script and Jay Fraley's even-keeled direction -- just stylish enough to keep you engaged, but not so flashy as to be distracting.

Eric Marchese of the Orange County Register puts it well: "Nocturne doesn't ask for our empathy -- it just is what it is. Were it to press harder for emotion, we might not feel much. Because Rapp's writing is so restrained, he lends the play power, making it easily the equivalent of the biographical fiction of Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote."

WHERE: The Rude Guerrilla Theater in Santa Ana
WHEN: Saturdays August 23 and 30 at 4:30pm; Sundays August 24 and 31 at 7:00pm
PRICE: $20 general admission / $15 seniors / $10 students
MORE INFO: Rude Guerrilla Theater's Website (scroll down for info.)
Orange County Register Review