Whose Christmas festivities would be complete without the presence of a few crafty felons?
I know that the most memorable of my own Christmases involved at least one embezzler. (My stepfather, for one, was so gifted he never got convicted!)
If you don’t have any felons in your family to add heat to the occasion, then dig a tunnel to the Lonny Chapman Theatre for The Group Rep’s production of My Three Angels.
The cast is a delightfully seasoned syndicate of talent. Robert Gallo, Garrett Marshall and Lloyd Pedersen stand out as especially and deliciously egregious. Julia Silverman, as pleading wife and mother, Hersha Parady as accidental foil, Chris Winfield (who also designed the scandalous set) as tyrannical cousin, and Daniel Sykes as the tyrant’s abiding son, are perfectly cast.
The play’s premise is a clever one. Three Devil's Island prisoners on work-release are hired to build a roof for a family but end up building for them so much more. In the process of bailing out the struggling businessman father and husband, his convivial wife and love-starved daughter, the three conmen use their sundry proclivities to ensure that all have a holiday to remember.
And such a shift in social status -- prisoner-cum-keeper -- makes us think about the haves, the have-nots and the alleged relativity of morality at a time of year when such notions arguably should be pondered.
For a night of robust theater with sure-fire, serial laughs, witness My Three Angels, written by Sam and Bella Spewack and directed by Larry Eisenberg, which runs now through January 15, 2012.
The Lonny Chapman Theatre is located at 10900 Burbank Blvd. North Hollywood, CA 91601.
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