"The Credeaux Canvas" - Stages Theatre Center, Hollywood, CA

Thursday evening I walked into the Stages Theatre Center in Hollywood with excitement as I had read that the play I was seeing would concern three young artists living in Manhattan's East Village. Having spent six years as a New Yorker, the premise of "The Credeaux Canvas" immediately sparked my interest. I sat down in my seat and glanced upon the set. An overwhelming sense of familiarity and a twinge of sadness came over me. It was an all too recognizable portrait: exposed brick wall, barred windows, makeshift furniture, shrunken kitchen appliances, mismatched throw cushions and blankets, faux "vintage" poster reproductions, and canvases and piles of magazines haphazardly spread out on the floor. Nice. I smiled. They had definitely hit the nail on the head.

The play opens on Amelia as she tiptoes around the apartment wearing a plaid robe and wool socks and clutching a cup of coffee. An alarm goes off and Winston emerges from underneath a blanket on the couch. Sleepily he greets her and dives into a box of cereal. Their exchange is a bit awkward; she has been dating his roommate Jamie for the past six months but has yet to really speak to the boy living on the couch. She inquires about his art, as it is strewn all over the apartment and he obliges. Career goals and life intentions are discussed, as well as the tedious jobs they both must take in order to make ends meet. Amelia is a singer and Winston a painter, yet neither make a living pursuing their creative endeavors. She is between waitressing gigs and he clocks in hours as a library checkout clerk. The tone of their exchange begins to touch on the depressing until it is saved by the intrusion of Jamie. He bursts through the front door bearing gifts in the form of coffee and pastries. Jamie's highly entertaining monologue that follows relays the events of his morning which prove to be the catalyst for the rest of the play's action. After learning that he is left out from his wealthy father's will, Jamie devises a plan in which to scam an older female art collector out of a great deal of money. Using his best friend and girlfriend as painter and subject, Jamie hopes to forge a painting by obscure artist Jacques Credeaux. Will his scheme work? They decide to give it a shot in the hopes that it will be an end to all of their money issues. The plot, of course, gets more complicated as Winston and Amelia grow closer. And like most stories, everything boils down to relationships and boundaries.

From the start, I immediately related to the characters and their circumstances. I wish it wasn't such a reality: young middle to upper middle class recent college graduates struggling to find balance between their desire to create and their need to survive financially. After spending years working on their talents, these young adults are spewed out onto the streets of any given city and expected to find their niche. Even as I write this, a commercial for the show "Quarterlife" is playing in the background. It is yet another showcase for the post collegiate dilemma: What am I doing with my life?

Keith Bunim's script is engaging, humorous and most importantly able to zero in on this sect of the population with realism and insight. All of the actors in this production of "The Credeaux Canvas" faired extremely well. I particularly found Bill Tangradi's solid representation of the privileged yet neglected manipulator Jamie to be the strongest performance in the play. His energy managed to upstage everything and everyone around him in the best of ways. Judson Blane (Winston) and Corryn Cummins (Amelia) fit into their characters so easily that at times I thought perhaps they were simply playing themselves. And maybe they were, but that's unimportant. It worked for me. As Tess, the art collecting client of Jamie's late father, Patricia Place managed to make me laugh and (almost) cry in the mere 10 minutes she was on stage. And that is all I really want in a performance.

"The Credeaux Canvas" is playing at the Stages Theatre Center in Hollywood through March 15^th. I would catch a performance before it's too late. This gem of a show will be particularly entertaining to the New York transplants currently enjoying their quarter life crises out here in L.A.!