L.A. Playwright Jennie Webb finds love in the strangest of places in <>Currency, her madcap farce now premiering at the Inkwell Theater (formerly Black Dahlia). Directed by Annie McVey, the play kicks off at breakfast-time, with Helen (Dale Waddington) and Dan (Warren Davis) facing each other awkwardly, after having spent an unexpected night in bed together. Passion gone, the couple now find they have very little to say to each other. But just as Dan is just about to walk out the door, he gets a phone call telling him that his long-homeless brother has been murdered. Stunned but not necessarily upset by the news, Dan needs time to recover. That keeps him in place for the arrival of a succession of wacky characters, each of whom is not shy about making himself heard. Rae (Gina Torrecilla), Helen’s brash sister, bosses everyone in sight; Georgia (Shirley Jordan), Helen’s workmate, tries to drag her off to the office (when she’s not babbling away on the phone); Sparky (Josh Stamell), a space-cadet with controversial ideas about the monetary system, arrives to console brother Dan. The fourth visitor, who arrives late in the game in a body bag, is Dan’s dead brother. Webb weaves all of these absurdly competing forces into a semi-coherent whole, keeping an eye on Helen and Dan’s off-and-on love affair as best she can. But it isn’t until an earthquake strikes that the affair is resolved. Thrown into each other’s arms by the force of the seismic deus ex machina, they realize that this where they belong. It’s a very L.A. kind of love story. Farce is always hard to bring off, but thanks to Webb’s way with comedy and to some skillful acting and directing, Currency pays off in a satisfying way.
