Royal Blood is a family drama set on the back porch of a house in Los Angeles. Itâs hard to say exactly what it is about the set, designed by Jennifer Zeyl, that gives such an authentic whiff of California. Maybe itâs not the set at all, but the seats the audience sits inâa mishmash of lawn furniture, deck chairs, park benches, and wicker thrones. The set itself almost looks like the backyard in a sitcom, which sets the audience up for the first surprise: This play, a world premiere by local playwright Sonya Schneider, is the opposite of funny.
Itâs a show about how the suicide of one family member draws the goblins out of everyone else. Amy Love has the first lines of the show, and at first you think sheâs overactingâthe lilting way she calls out âFather!â is irritatingâuntil you realize her character, Deb, is off her rocker.
Sheâs the âretarded aunt,â as her niece puts it, and this false, faltering voice is only one of many symptoms. The niece is played by Nicole Merat, a recent Cornish grad with a lot of promise and an intuitive sense of the brattiness of 16-year-olds. But the performance that will still be burned onto your brain the next day is by Todd Jefferson Moore as the patriarch of the familyâa cocky, cancerous jerk with World War II damage, blinding pride, and a bunch of things heâd rather not talk about. The climax of the show rests in his shaky hands, and without giving anything away, itâs legitimately terrifying.
The drama comes from the stress of certain characters knowing more about various secrets than other characters, but the humor (there is some) comes from places of nastiness or stupidity. Deb, a fortysomething virgin and obsessive movie watcher, tries to draw out her teenage niece on the topic of how sex feels by exclaiming, âWhat was it like? Was it like Basic Instinct?â Or hereâs the granddad trying to get his granddaughter to have a cigarette with him:
âWant one?â he says.
âSmoking kills,â she says.
âExactly,â he says.
Schneider, the playwright, has arrayed a convincing range of relatives, and her ulterior goalâtrying to show these characters that they are not as special as they think they areâcomes to fruition brilliantly. That said, a little cutting would go a long way. Act one is mercifully brief, but act two isnât, padded out with a few âweâre nearing the end of the showâ type passages that just seem cheesy. Mari Nelson has the biggest role in the show as Dorothy, the capable career woman trying to distance herself from all these sorry fools, but itâs not an entirely convincing performance: She barrels through lots of lines that would be more powerful if she just took her time. (Maybe sheâs aware that act two needs cuts and sheâs just trying to help things along?) Then again, one feels so snugly trapped by the revelations in act two that the whole thing sputtering on a little long seems minor.
Far more overwhelming are the playâs great strengths. A world premiere by a local playwright is always a dodgy proposition, but this is a satisfying, captivating theatrical experience, immersive and wrenching. In conclusion: Children are awful, but not as awful as parents.