The diminutive Fountain Theater may be small in size, but the performances and theme of its current offering, Dreamcatcher, are huge.
Written by Stephen Sachs, the theater’s artistic director, the play, running through March 31st, on the surface tells the story of Roy (Brian Tichnell) a passionate solar engineer bent on helping the environment, and Opal (Elizabeth Frances) the vibrant young Mojave woman with whom he’s having an affair. They find themselves at odds over the fact that Roy’s company is planning to build a massive solar energy project on ground that Opal has just discovered holds an ancient burial ground.
Beneath the surface of this dilemma is another: Opal may be pregnant, Roy may be married to someone else.
Taking place on a stage in the round that’s been transformed to a circle of desert that’s basically sand and rock, the sometimes steamy, always morally provocative dialog rockets the audience through the single act play constantly on edge. Who is right and who is wrong here? Are moral concerns to be put aside for the “greater good,” whether that is the ecology of the planet or the wife Roy left behind in Massachusetts? Are traditions, lives, past lives, animals, humans merely particles caught in a corporate machine, no matter how well-intentioned? What is of value? An idea, a science, love, the hapless birds whose fiery deaths Roy jokes about having witnessed as they plummet into the heat of the solar panels?
All of these questions simmer while Roy and Opal’s relationship boils over in a fight both physical and emotional, cathartic and heart-breaking. While the play may at times skim over the hard choices both the audience and the characters must make, the political, social, environmental, and moral choices and ambiguities are entirely relatable and extremely timely.
Take this one in – it’s the kind of tough, makes-you-think theater we need more of in a city of thoughtless celluloid super heroes.
The Fountain Theater is located at 5060 Fountain Ave. in Los Angeles.