Ray Bradbury's "Yestermorrows" at the Fremont Theatre

---Theatre Review

Master storyteller Ray Bradbury´s creative genius once again teases our minds and pulls at our heartstrings in this trio of short plays presented by his Pandemonium Theatre Company at the Fremont Centre Theatre in South Pasadena. Based on several of Bradbury´s more than 600 short stories, these particular stories all seem to have nostalgic or reflective tone.

In "A Device out of Time," a boy takes his younger brother to see a "Time Machine," except the device is human, not mechanical. Huddled in an antique wheel chair beneath an old blanket and what we gradually discover is multiple layers of costumes, sits in an elderly man, who at first glance appears to be… dead.

Douglas (Seth Casanova) pulls a glass jar from the paper bag he´s been carrying, gives it a shake and lays it in the lap of the silent man. As the jar flickers with captured lightning bugs, he leans close and whispers a date and the phrase "…the Boston Variety Theatre…" Young Tom (Daniel Casanova) watches wide-eyed, waiting. Minutes pass. We wonder if the boys have come too late.

Then in a movement that startles both Tom and the audience, Colonel Freeleigh (played with delightful animation by David Fox-Brenton), emerges in full vigor from his death-like cocoon to become an Oriental magician dressed in red and black, demonstrating (unsuccessfully) how he will catch a speeding bullet in his teeth!

After the tale, the Colonel folds back into a lifeless lump in the chair, only to emerge again when the boy whispers in his ear. This time, he´s Pawnee Bill in buckskins, with an absorbing account of the last great bison stampede. Finally he´s a Confederate General in military gray encouraging a frightened drummer boy on the eve of the Battle at Shiloh.

Each glimpse of glory and greatness comes with a reminder: don´t let the past be forgotten.

In "Cistern" the audience is caught and held utterly spellbound by the mesmerizing, almost hypnotic, performance by Georgan George of a woman immersed in a fantasy world of water, passion and death.

While her sister Juliet (Roses Prichard) anchors us to reality by calmly sitting on the porch, mending clothes, the otherworldly Anna obsesses eerily about the falling rain; how it runs down the pipes into the sewer (cistern), where it slowly reconstitutes the withered bodies of lovers who lie dead beneath the city´s streets. As the water surges around and under them, it softens them and infuses them with desire, which it then gently consummates.

A palpable sense of unease grows throughout this bizarre story until it reaches the sudden shocking – if not totally unexpected – conclusion.

George brings Bradbury´s already vivid prose to life with her seductive voice and sinewy movements until she almost becomes the water she describes. A brilliant performance. Brava!

"The Meadow" is a lighter story, gently poignant and satisfying. The streets and buildings of an old studio back lot are being slowly demolished under the guise of progress. A faithful night watchman (the always compelling, Michael Prichard) decries the destruction, remembering glorious scenes from the films that were made there.

Each night he repairs the damage, buttressing the crumbling walls of Casablanca, Paris and New York. Only after a nighttime visit from the Studio Chief (Steven Robert Wollenberg) and an hour of moonlit reminiscing on a rooftop façade, is the old man appeased.

Bradbury seems to be looking back in these stories, instead giving us his usual dire warnings of a bookless, loveless, or people-less future. But there are warnings in "Yestermorrows" just the same: yesterday´s objects, loved ones, and events – if not forgotten – will help us be better prepared to live in tomorrow.

"Yestermorrows" plays Fridays & Saturdays at 8 pm, and Sundays at 3 pm through September 5.

General admission is $20, seniors ate $15, and students are $10. For reservations, call (323) 960-4451, or go online at www.Plays411.com/raybradbury

The Fremont Centre Theatre is located at 1000 Fremont Ave, So. Pasadena, 91030 (close to the Mission Street station of the Metrolink Gold Line). There is plenty of free parking behind the theatre.