The Hollywood Fringe Festival, now in its second year in L.A., is the proper place for offbeat and irreverent work -- a case in point being Another Effing Family Drama, the new one-act play by Catherine Pelonero, author of such previously successful works as Family Names and Awesome Ghosts of Ontario, both published by Samuel French.
The inspiration for Another Effing Family drama, Pelonero confides in a program note, grew out of her boredom with realistic family dramas. Pelonero pokes gleeful fun at this all-too-familiar theatrical genre in which "somebody full of hurt and resentment" goes home to have it out with another family member, usually a parent, in the desperate hope of finding "closure."
That's exactly what happens in Effing: June (the fiery Eva Minemar) comes back to Buffalo to have it out with her ailing mother, Eleanor (a crabby Ann Ryerson). June bluntly describes who she is and what she needs in a satirical aria aimed at the audience: "I'm the sympathetic main character full of needs." (After breaking the fourth wall thusly, June later confesses that "only assholes break the fourth wall.") Further keeping June and Eleanor from reconciling are the next-door neighbors, a nutty trio (Josh Brewster, Kenny Johnston and Monica Martin) who keep ruining things with their outrageous behavior. A goofy deliveryman (Jack Hunter) provides surprise laughs and plot twists as well.
Another Effing Family Drama pulls all the stops out in its comic assault on kitchen-sink naturalism and tries to destroy it with salvos of ridicule and laughter.
