Victory has ‘The End of Sex’ and more
Listen to this articleThe 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.
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.
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
Ron Irwin was born in Chicago, Illinois a long time ago. He served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam, became a trial lawyer, TV and radio host, CEO of a public company and once held an Emmy. He never won an Emmy he just held one. Ron has written and published twelve books. His most important book to date is “Live, Die, Live Again” in which Ron tells of his early life and his unexpected and very temporary death in 2012. That experience dramatically refocused his life and within the pages of that book Ron reveals how he achieved a much healthier life, ridding himself of Diabetes, Cancer and Heart Failure. Now Ron enjoys writing about many things including health topics, travel [he has circled the globe several times], adventure, culinary experiences and the world of performing art. Ron’s motto is “Live better, live longer and live stronger because it feels great and annoys others.” Contact the author.