Ode To The Wasp woman.

"Ode To The Wasp Woman" at Actors Temple Theatre is a very up and down play that has as many good things in it as it does pitfalls. The story has its premise in four actors who died prematurely. Sean Young who plays Susan Cabot, Douglass Everett Davis is George Reeves, Payton Georgiana is Barbra Payton and Josh Alscher is Alfalfa from "The little Rascals" fame.

Rider McDowell has written this interesting play that points to the difficulty of making it in Hollywood; once you make it, if your lucky enough, it is staying on top that becomes the real challenge. As a childhood star, Carl Switzer could not find success beyond The Little Rascals, George Reeves was typecast and had difficulty getting any jobs after his role in "Superman". Both Switzer and Reeves would die from gunfire. In the case of Barbra Payton and Susan Cabot, their lives would take a turn for the worse because of life circumstances.Payton would face sexual abuse as a thirteen year old and her wild ways led to her downfall once she became a starlit. In Cabot's case, her world would fall apart when she delivered a baby that would be a Dwarf. Obsessed with making her son, Timmy taller by using human growth hormones, it drove him insane at the same time. He would eventually kill his mother in a fit of rage.

Rider McDowell who wrote and directed this play has some inconsistencies in both. Some of the blocking in this play are questionable, as is the sound in the play. Where simple movements become overdone, the prerecording in the play were awful. The lighting was very supportive throughout the evening (Maarten Cornelis) and the costumes were well done by Pearl Gopalani. In Christian Fleming's scenic design, the constant changing of the room was a distraction to the flow of this production.

While there were four stories, two were exceptional; the first (Alfalfa) and the third (George Reeves). Payton Georgiana and Anna Telfer were outstanding as were Davis and Alscher. As the lead bill Sean Young at times struggled with her lines and her acting consistency.David Wenzel was consistent in his various roles as was Rita Louise. Jonathan Hartman was erratic in his performance throughout the play.

As a former investigative reporter, Rider McDowell gave us that feeling in his play. He approaches the writing with a macabre angel to it. The lives of the actors before us are laid out as a TV police show with not a lot of emotion from the actors which stems from the shows direction. In the shows 120 minutes we get a potpourri of the four actors lives and not a lot of depth to them.

"Ode" was a very mixed bag... it brought back the old time actors which had a good vibe to it and yet it just didn't go deep enough into the lives. A good example of this is the writing on actor Barbra Payton. We get a small feel into her abuse as an adolescent but writer Rider McDowell only scratches the surface as to how it affected her in later years. We see that she became a B actor, was that solely of her bad choices in picking movies? Was it because she lacked talent? We are told she is blackballed after coming out with an affair with Bob Hope but we never fully are told the whole reason as to why she went into abject poverty and self destruction.

Sean Young, Actors Temple Theatre, Off Broadway, New York City, Barbra Payton, George Reeves, Superman, Hollywood Land, WPIX Chanel 11, Sweeney Todd, Will Swanson, Some Like it Hot, Hamilton, The Lion King, Harry Potter, Aladdin, Spamelot.