Victory has ‘The End of Sex’ and more

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The show opens with a man and a woman talking in their home. Upstairs they believe are a young man and young women who are guests for the night. It doesn’t take long for the senior gentleman Ken, played to perfection by Tom Ormeny, to begin verbalizing his suspicions that the young couple in their guest room are having sex, lots of sex. His imagination is clearly running wild and so his comments are actually very funny.

His wife Nancy, masterfully portrayed by Sara Botsford, begins to share some of her thoughts on the subject of sex, primarily that she is no longer interested in engaging. You can just imagine how that revelation impacts Ken. His reactions are rather predictable but concurrently hilarious.

Tom Ormeny and Sara Botsford

As their discussion of sex continues their daughter and her husband arrive. The daughter Heather, convincingly delivered by Austin Highsmith, soon concludes that there is more involved than menopause and that her mother needs some serious help. Her husband Ryan, well delivered by Chad Coe, sees it differently and comments that Heather always sides with her father and as all of this develops it simply becomes totally zany.

But there is also clearly a dark side in the making. And then seemingly totally unrelated Nancy begins to tell of her dissatisfaction with the flowers given to her by Ken. So where is this all going?

Along the path the darkness deepens, conflict emerges and grows between Heather and Ryan. At about this point the show has turned from extremely funny to extremely tenebrous as the characters reveal some very deep emotional issues. One clear manifestation is when in a rage Ryan swallows a potentially deadly overdose of a tranquilizer.

Clearly the tone of the show has by this point dramatically shifted. Oh and those two younger folks who were believed to be in the guest room having unrelenting sex, well they had left in the middle of the night. As the show comes to its end Nancy is paying very close attention to the flowers she had earlier professed displeasure with.

Lianna Liew and Sara Botsford

Perhaps the experiences over the past several hours had probably given her a new perspective and also just maybe the true issue has less to do with sex but rather more other deep psychological issues. But that is just my take away and may well have not been intended.

Whatever your take away may be I promise you will find the show filled with humor and ultimately thought provoking. For that kudos go to the writer Gay Walch and Director Maria Gobetti,  So taking into account all parties involved in The End of Sex it is a great show packing plenty of punch

You will find The End of Sex at the Victory Center Theater, 3326 W. Victory Boulevard, Burbank, California now through June 2nd2019. Reservations and ticketing are available by calling 1-818-841-5421 or online.

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Photos courtesy of Victory Center Theater
Top photo: Chad Coe and Austin Highsmith