Ray Bradbury returns to So. Pasadena

"Invisible Boy"

Theater review by Jackie Houchin

The Pandemonium Theatre Company has opened another trio of plays by the 2007 Pulitzer Prize author, Ray Bradbury.

In one evening, audiences will be treated to "Bless Me Father for I Have Sinned," "The Pedestrian" and "Invisible Boy" directed by Alan Neal Hubbs

Both "Bless Me Father" and "Invisible Boy" are reprised from their brief, 2-week run at Christmas time.

Act I - "Bless Me Father for I Have Sinned" is set in a church confessional on Christmas Eve. Jay Gerber skillfully performs a monologue of a priest hearing the confession of an event that took place nearly fifty years earlier.

Clever spotlighting artistry illuminates first the priest then the confessor, though the two are one. A peculiar twist at the end leaves patrons with differing thoughts as to what really happened.

Act II - "The Pedestrian," set in Los Angeles in 2049 AD, is a classic, futuristic Ray Bradbury tale. Starring talented Jay Gerber and the renowned actor and audio-book reader, Michael Prichard, it tells the story of two senior men yearning for an earlier existence. In that distant year, people live insular lives having little contact with the outside world; indeed, with anything out of doors.

Len (Prichard) convinces his old friend to join him in a forbidden midnight jaunt through a world devoid of humans, outside their walls and into the starry, fresh-aired night. Hesitant, he nevertheless clothes himself in a matching black outfit and slips out his door. They experience the quietude, the memory-recalling scents and the fear of being caught.

Alas, their fears are realized and only one is allowed to return home. Once again, the audience is provoked to think, and many discuss the play's theme during intermission.

Act III - In the title play, "Invisible Boy," set in the Ozarks in the 1920s, a lonely backwoods woman ( Roses Prichard) tries many ways to entice her cousin's son not to go home to his parents but to stay with her awhile "for company." She resorts to tomfoolery, saying she's bewitched him into being invisible.

Delighted by the ruse, Charlie (reprised by the youthful Grady Hutt) agrees to stay "till the spell wears off." Pleased with herself, the woman confides, "I got me my company for spring and late summer."

But the boy's teasing antics - including what the program calls "tasteful nudity" (but which reveals a bit more than Hutt's bare back side) - cause her to "turn him visible" again. In the closing scene, Prichard delivers a wistfully poignant monologue.

The three short plays run Thursdays - Saturdays at 8:00 pm and Sundays at 3:00 pm, now through February 9.

Admission is $20 (seniors $15, students $10). Call (323)960-4451 for reservations.

The Fremont Centre Theatre is located at 1000 Fremont Ave (corner of El Centro), in South Pasadena.

Opening night guests were privileged to meet Ray Bradbury and purchase and have books signed.

In a taped, pre-curtain interview, the author recounted a few personal stories (At 24 he visited a psychiatrist and said he wanted to be the greatest writer who ever lived. He was told to go the library and read the life stories of all the great writers. Bradbury confessed that he didn't become the greatest writer that ever lived, "but... it ain't bad!").

He also displayed a 'Commander of French Arts and Letters' metal recently given to him by the French Government, and a 8x10 photo of himself at 20th Century Fox - joining striking writers on the picket line.

Mr. Ray Bradbury is an entertaining speaker as well as a talented author.