Hal Perry on "America's Most Wanted"

Hal Perry, who has appeared with us in Terminus Americana, What If? (Vol. II 2009), Infinite Black Suitcase, and The Birds, appears in the "Gilbert and De La Harren" segment of the "Miami Model Mystery" episode of America's Most Wanted. Here he plays crime victim Craig Martin, who was blinded in a struggle during an attempted robbery of his convenience store in South Carolina.

The entire episode can be seen here, and Hal's segment starts at about the 19:30 mark.

A Curtain Up review of "bobrauschenbergamerica"

A CurtainUp Los Angeles Review
bobrauschenbergamerica

By Evan Henerson

Look, everything overlaps, doesn't it? Is connected some kind of way. Once you put it all together, it's just obvious. I mean, tie a string to something, and see where it takes you.

When you think about it, this was really a match made in mashed-up paradise. Robert Rauschenberg, the American collageist as seen through the eyes of Charles L. Mee, a playwright who borrows everything from everywhere — mythology, current events, soap opera strands — and tosses it all up on stage in a big crazy quilt that somehow fashions itself into a play.

Director Bart DeLorenzo of the Evidence Room and the members of the SpyAnts Theatre Co. all clearly have the bug, and have brought the L.A. premiere of Mee's bobrauschenbergamerica to the Ford Amphitheatre's inside space. The play is Mee's take on how Rauschenberg, who died in 2008, might have seen the world had he been a playwright instead of a sculptor. The results are delightful if seriously quirky, — a series or largely unrelated musings on love, life, art, existence, the cosmos and cornball chicken jokes, not necessarily in that order of importance.

There is a script (it's up on Mee's (re)making project website, www.charlesmee.com), but DeLorenzo's cast makes you feel like the universe could tilt ever so slightly and some things would end up differently. Indeed, here's betting that the group of elderly barbershop singers who came in for a parade sequence might give way to different roadside entertainment at a subsequent performance.

Our players are a derelict (played by Brett Hren),. . .a stargazer (Eric Bunton) and his dancer lover (Mark Slater) . . . a trucker (Danny Parker-Lopes) and his bathing beauty girlfriend (Maria Tomas) . . . a fickle love-seeking woman dressed up in Jackie O regalia (Jennifer Etienne Eckert) and the man she dumped (Adam Dornbusch). . . a disturbing pizza delivery guy (John Charles Meyer) named Bob and Bob's Mom (Mari Marks). Bob's Mom is either supposed to be Rauschenberg's mother or the pizza delivery boy's. I'm not sure which. I'm not sure Mee intends us to know for certain.

Rasuchenberg is honored in the title, and there are various slideshow musings by Bob's Mom that frequently end with "art was not a part of our life." Otherwise, it's not difficult to see where Rauschenberg ends and Mee begins. Many of the playwright's signature oddities — spontaneous dance numbers, non sequiter emoting, extended musing on love — play giddily across DeLorenzo's staging. That said, the spirit of Rauschenberg is duly honored by DeLorenzo and company.

Props and set pieces, curios of all sorts dot Marina Mouhibian's set. The trucker's girl plays checkers from a rusty bathtub bearing a "No Parking" sign. A door frame, with a stuffed heron perched atop, evokes an empty and decidedly surreal landscape. Plaudits to prop master Hal Perry for finding a 12 foot bowling pin that never even gets used.

Mee's plays are not for the shy, and the cast members attack their roles with gleeful abandon. Particularly fetching is Eckert's Susan, defending her romantic choices while devouring the contents of a cake pan, and Tomas pouring out the ingredients for a martini on a plastic floor canvas and then proceeding to slosh through it. Parker-Lopes, sporting a trucker's beard, smoothly handles an assortment of wince-inducing chicken jokes, and everyone moves gracefully or with appropriate abandon to Ken Roht's choreography.

Praise also is due Breeze Braunschweig as the always skating, never speaking Roller Girl, a vision in 70s era beach shorts and tube socks who proves that you don't need lines to have an impact. What Braunschweig's Roller Girl is doing sitting at the same picnic table as Becker, Carl, Susan and the rest is anybody's guess. In the landscape of Mee's Rauschenberg, everything kind of melds even as it clashes. That's kind of the point.

LA Times review of "Terminus Americana"

Theater Review: 'Terminus Americana' at Elephant Theater

The title of "Terminus Americana" refers to the tome of conspiracy theorem that drives Matt Pelfrey's coruscating satire. That volume is something of a Macguffin. The core focus of "Terminus" is the twilight of American empire, as refracted through a violence-infatuated media, which the jaggedly effective production by TheSpyAnts caustically embraces.

It begins benignly enough, as Mac Winchell (the excellent Brett Hren) takes a chirpy phone call from wife Brenda (CB Spencer). His confidential exchange with fellow employee Felix (Hal Perry) suggests the kind of corporate evisceration that Billy Wilder patented.

Then Felix goes on a shooting rampage, whispers a tacit message to Mac before killing himself, and "Terminus" barrels into pitch-black absurdist territory.

Pelfrey ("An Impending Rupture of the Belly") possesses an unflinchingly original voice. If the polemic can be overt, that seems the point, with the accuracy of Pelfrey's broadsides both hilarious and disturbing.

Barring some halting transitions, director Danny Parker-Lopes keeps the tone grimly akimbo. The designs are sparely resourceful, and the cast (with alternates) is adept, impressively centered by Hren's antihero. At the reviewed performance, John Charles Meyer's outré executive, Maria Tomas' secret-society emissary, and Justin Dabuet and Adam Dornbusch as hacking Marlboro Men stood out amid an accomplished pack.

Written well before Sept. 11, 2001, the play premiered at Lodestone Theatre Ensemble shortly afterward. Its relevance has only deepened in the wake of subsequent gun-related national tragedies. "Terminus Americana" won't be for everyone -- but perhaps it should be.

--David C. Nichols

"Terminus Americana," Elephant Theatre, 6322 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends Aug. 15. $20. (323) 860-8786. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.

Photo: Hal Perry and Brett Hren in "Terminus Americana." Credit: TheSpyAnts

Hal Perry's Miller Lite Commercials

Our member Hal Perry (Infinite Black Suitcase, The Reunion, The Birds) has at least three commercials airing now for Lite Beer from Miller, two of which you can see here. After clicking the link, verify your age, and then go to "commercials," and from there, click on either "Wedding Tailgate" or "Outdoor Movie."

Presently they are airing during the NCAA basketball tournement on CBS, among many other places.

StageSceneLA review for "Infinite Black Suitcase"

From StageSceneLA

The Illustrious Spy Ants are presenting the world premiere production of
Infinite Black Suitcase, EM Lewis. Having seen their The Most Fabulous Story
Ever Told, and the recent Rudolph the Red-Hosed Reindeer, I knew them to
be a company of talented comic actors, but I was not prepared for the
depth of emotion they bring to Lewis' seriocomic "one day in the life" story of
a group of rural Oregonians facing death...and life after the death of a
loved one.

Director Danny Parker-Lopes has helmed a fine ensemble of young and not
so young actors, among whom there are a number of standouts. Longtime
Spy Ants Eric Bunton and Jerry Pappas have palpable rapport as a gay
couple, one dying, one facing the burden of his partner's illness and the fear
of life without him. Bunton and Pappas, laugh out loud hilarious in both
"Fabulous" and "Rudolph," prove themselves to be consummate dramatic
actors as well. Bring kleenex.

I also very much liked the intensity and depth of Ryan Churchill's Joe, whose
ex-wife and the mother of his three daughters, is dying (very good work by
Darcy Halsey as the hospitalized ex), the delightful comic relief of Dawn
Merkel's cemetery employee, and Bill J. Stevens warm and witty Father
Sebastian. Tammy Kaitz is reminiscent of a young Karen Black and Linc Hand
shows young leading man potential. Ken Arquelio, Kim Estes, Addi Gaash,
Anita Khanzadian, Marina Mouhibian, Hal Perry, and Rich Williams ably
complete the large and talented cast.

Infinite Black Suitcase may be about pain and sadness death and dying,
but it's also about the joy of living and loving, and is well worth spending a
very fast moving 90 minutes with. I, and at least one other audience
member I overheard, wouldn't have minded spending even more time with
these people.

APRIL 2007, LILIAN THEATRE, HOLLYWOOD.

--Steven Stanley

LA Splash review for "Infinite Black Suitcase"

LASPLASH.COM: Los Angeles Performances

Infinite Black Suitcase - Review

By Keisha7



It's been said that everyone deals with grief in their own way. TheSpyAnts' latest production at the Lillian Theatre delivers a healthy dose of that adage for a full uninterrupted 90 minutes. Stories of lost and languishing life unfold and overlaps onto themselves, entwining and pulling at the living in EM Lewis' Infinite Black Suitcase.



The play is an anthology of stories, all unique in their perspective of impending or sudden death. Young Kal Kalinski (Linc Hand) is the face of utter denial as he repeatedly tries to extract a reasonable explanation of a recent family death from Stan Kalinski (Ken Arquelio). Meanwhile Stan is trying to ward off Kal's barrage of questions long enough to fit a proper black dress onto his catatonic sister Janie (Marina Mouhibian). He has no time for sorrow; he has to get everyone to the funeral on time. He's the one that keeps going even when everyone else stalls.



Dan Hanlon's (Eric Bunton) withering figure makes his slow and agonizing trek to his hospital bed even as the audience continues to fill the theater, well before curtain. Having arrived at acceptance, Dan lies patiently in wait until death comes for him. Hooked up to an IV drip, he waits for death in the company of the witty, plant toting, affectionate and consoling Stephen (Jerry Pappas). Throughout the show, they play out a bittersweet goodbye that is taking too long for each of them.



Somewhere in the same hospital, Katie Barnes (Darcy Halsey) tries to bring her ex, Joe (Ryan Churchill) and new husband Tony (Kim Estes) to a truce regarding her children before she dies. There is the sense that the two men have always been at each other, and even Katie's approaching death is not enough to get the two to see beyond their petty bickering. Anything to avoid talking about the fact that she's dying.



Perhaps my favorite segment was between Father Sebastian (Bill J. Stevens) and the non-Catholic Frank (Hal Perry) who finds his way into a confessional that fateful afternoon. The priest's indulgence of the inebriated lost sheep is quite funny. When it is revealed that Frank feels guilt over the recent suicide of his father, the priest's kindness is heartwarming.

TheSpyAnts Company takes an introspective piece about death and dying and blends in a great balance of humanity and humor. The production, directed by Danny Parker-Lopes, shuffles the 17-member ensemble through space and storylines with ease. The screenplay keeps the points of view rotating, a key element that allows the play to avoid being overly sentimental or dark. It explores the rip effect death can cause in one's personal well of guilt, that often exists long before any loss is experienced. Moreover, it examines our innate need to fill that loss of life with something: sex, alcohol, a reason.

'Infinite Black Suitcase' runs now through May 06, 2007
Fridays & Saturdays @ 8pm, Sundays @ 7pm at:

Lillian Theatre
1076 Lillian Way
Hollywood, CA 90038

For more information visit: http://www.plays411.com/newsite/show/play_info.asp

Photos by Jeff Ellington

Official website: http://www.thespyants.com/

"Birds" Playwright David Cerda on our show

David Cerda, one of the co-writers of The Birds came in from Chicago to see our show at the McCadden Theater over the weekend, and posted his take on it on his blog, and here's what he had to say:

So you're all dying to know...How was it? Saturday night, Chris myself and the Yourex lot attended 'The Birds- A Tail of Ornithic Proportions' (they chose that subtitle) at the McCadden Place Theater in Hollywood, California, baby. The theater was small, holding about 55, which adds to the claustrophobic effect that suits this play so well.

For those of you out of the loop , or for those who weren't in Chicago during the fall of 2001, I'll fill you in about what 'The Birds' is all about. The Birds is a combination, parody and backstory of Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Birds'. But wait, there's more..., It's also a feminist drag deconstruction of the film with 90's pop culture icon Camille Paglia serving as the tour guide to the inner sanctum of Tippi Hedren's journey into the darkness created by the HUGE shadow Alfred Hitchcock cast once he decided Tippi was to be his personal property. Unfortunately for Ms. Hedren, this is all true, and the making of 'The Birds' was quite an experience for her.

The feminist deconstruction part was inspired by many things a, including my own take on the film but the nail that solidified this view was Camille Paglia's brilliant, and compulsively over the top essay on the film for British Films Institute. When Camille, like myself, likes something, she doesn't 'sort of' like it, she embraces it, swallows it whole, much like myself.

Soooo..., this is not an easy show to do. There's the problem of bird attacks.There's the mimicking of the film style of the period, there's the very silly jokes and double takes mixed with the very real and disturbing systematic 'pecking' at Tippi Hedren's psyche, and there's a Camille Paglia interrupting and interacting with the cast. Particularly Tippi and Suzanne Pleshette. I read a review that says 'Alfred Hitchcock asks Camille Paglia to travel back in time to help psychologically dismember Tippi Hedren'. Okay..., The wonderful thing about theater is that I don't have to explainthingslike the fact that Camille Paglia pops up out of nowhere. She's just there. If people want to think she traveled back in time, then I guess that's okay, but for the record, Pauline Pang and I didn't really think that when we wrote it.

Where was I? Oh, yes, how were they? They were wonderful. They made bold choices, they were funny, they were scary, they were committed- they obviously loved the piece, and it shows. Did I like every single thing they did? No. But they made their choices, and director Kelly Ann Ford did some amazing things and staged the show beautifully and smoothly, and that is NOT an easy thing to do with the size of the cast, the scenes and the space. Everybody knows I love my Tracy Repep (Chicago Tippi) , but Lori Evans kicked ass as Tippi/Melanie, and I was so pleased with her performance I was like a smitten little school boy with her after the show. She even held the cotton swab the correct way, and in my world, things like that really matter. LA Suzanne was a feisty, lusty woman with a commanding stage presence, and her powerful take on the role was different then mine, but it worked, and the actress, Maria Tomas plays it it to the hilt. Brett Hren as Mitch is cute as hell, and has this Ewan McGregor thing going on, that literally charms the pants off of you when he smiles; and LYDIA...., Well, that would be the handsome Eric Bunton, who immerses himself in the role and is dressed to the nines and is a little more affectionate with Mitch then the movie or Chicago version. He's hilarious, and he's also the man to go to when you need to learn about any of the cast members. Peggy Robinson took the Natasha Fatale route with the beautifully sadistic Marina Mouhibian and Mrs. Bundy was played by (gasp) a WOMAN, the dead on Randi Pareira. Darcy Halsey was a smart and sexy ass Camille Paglia and gee, I can't mention everybody, but they were wonderful and so nice. Kim Estes was an incredibly scary and sexy Birdman in wings made by Brett Hren! Mrs. MacGruder was played by Patrik Carlok who was in the original cast of HAIR- he was wonderful, and it was such a blast feeling that theatrical connection. Oops, let's not forget the ugliest little girl in Bodega Bay, the darling Hal Perry as Cathy Brenner.

Like I said, it's difficult for me to gauge anything I've written, but Christopher thought the show was great and he's always brutally honest with me, so there. Go see it! The LA Times was there the night I went and if the review comes out it will be Thursday I'm told, so keep your fingers and toes crossed that she 'got' it.

LA Weekly review of "The Birds"

THE GULL CAN’T HELP IT
Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds lands onstage
STEVEN MIKULAN
Published on August 18, 2005

At the time of its release, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film, The Birds, was blown out of the sky with critical buckshot, dismissed as further proof that the director was becoming irrelevant in Hollywood. I saw it a year later, on my 11th birthday, and remember being disappointed — sure, there were some scary parts, but most of the movie seemed to consist of long, boring scenes of tense grownups holding cigarettes and talking to each other from across a room. And what kind of ending was that — why didn’t the Army or Air Force come to Bodega Bay and blast all those gulls and crows away? Today, of course, The Birds forms part of the immortal trinity of movies, with Vertigoand Psycho, that we most readily associate with the name Hitchcock. In 1998, culture critic Camille Paglia published a monograph analyzing The Birds through a pop-cultural/feminist lens. (“Hitchcock sees the house in historical terms as both safe haven and female trap.”) You wonder why she bothered — most of the film’s subtext is so apparent that it’s practically become a living-room tradition to provide running commentary as the movie plays on our TV screens. If anything, the real question has been why hadn’t The Birds been staged live as a loving spoof, A la a verbatim homage like The Singalong Sound of Music or an abbreviated satire along the lines of Phoxes. TheSpyAnts Theatre Company has answered that need with David Cerda and Pauline Pang’s 95-minute one-act, now running at the McCadden Place Theater, The Birds: A Tail of Ornithic Proportions is a crafty evening combining tribute, farce and feminist critique – with just the right sprinkling of camp. It’s a film within a play that searches for symbolic meaning in Hitchcock’s masterpiece even as it mocks such searches. The program notes tip us off to part of the game as we find actors doubling for such roles as “Worried Girl/Gull” while other parts are played in drag. Yet Cerda and Pang’s show, which premiered in Chicago five years ago, pushes the entertainment beyond an evening of cross-dressing and broad double takes. (Ryan Landry’s own transvestite sendup, The Gulls, appeared in 2003.) Underlining the onstage re-enactment of Hitchcock’s film is an examination of the auteur and his well-known twin obsessions for control and icy blond actresses — in particular, The Birds’ star, Tippi Hedren, whom he subjected to a grueling ordeal while shooting Evan Hunter’s script. The play opens as a Charlie “Bird” Parker melody fades from the speakers to be replaced with Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman,” while the lights come up on Paglia (Darcy Halsey) reading aloud from her book Sexual Personae. In a moment she’s on the phone speaking to Hitchcock’s ghost, who pleads with her to go back in time to become Hedren’s shrink on the set of The Birds. The film then unwinds onstage, beginning with the bird-shop scene, where Hedren’s character, Melanie Daniels (Lori Evans Taylor) first encounters Mitch Brenner/actor Rod Taylor (Brett Hren). It’s a moment of oversexed innuendo that portends the incestuous twitches of Mitch’s mother, Lydia, played in the film by Jessica Tandy (Eric Bunton), and the twilight sisterhood of Mitch’s ex-girlfriend, Annie Hayworth (Maria Tomas).The narrative moves in and out from the film’s “reality” to the story about the making of the film. Hitchcock’s birds appear onstage either as feathered creatures yanked about with sticks and wires, or acted out with ensemble members in wing-and-beak outfits designed by Marina Mouhibian. This may sound hopeless, but the re-enactment of the famous schoolhouse scene alone, with the town’s children singing the folk song “Risseldy Rosseldy” as murderous crows mass outside, vindicates director Kelly Ann Ford’s choice.Those looking for over-the-top antics will not leave disappointed. Whenever the Annie/Suzanne Pleshette character appears, for example, she’s in the mood to rip Melanie’s clothes off. (Not surprisingly, when Paglia arrives on the set, she makes a beeline for Annie and the two become quite literally inseparable.) And so it goes with the smothering Lydia, a brittle Jocasta who is the widowed mother of a 33-year old son and 13-year-old daughter (Hal Perry), a woman ever on the verge of tears while pawing at Mitch.Today, the movie’s Annie and Lydia scenes are the funniest because they are the most transparent examples of Park Avenue Freudianism turned to pulp fiction. We knew from the moment Pleshette’s smoky eyes locked onto Hedren that Annie’s picket-fence gate swung both ways. The school teacher’s cottage (safe haven or female trap?), with its modern art and crowded book shelves, screamed defiance against the town’s staid farming community. And, of course, her shared cigarettes and brandy toasts with her temporary roommate, Melanie, posed the intriguing question, Is there such a thing as a pre-coital smoke? Director Ford responds to the film’s Annie and Lydia by having Tomas and Bunton ramp up their characters, if such a thing is possible. Tomas plays her role as an out-of-control Liza Minelli in a negligee, while Bunton comes across as a women’s prison warden. I’m not sure that’s the subtlest approach, although the other choice would be to underplay the roles, which may not work at all; and Cerda and Pang make the show’s goosiness go down a little easier with a couple of music-hall-style songs that inexplicably interrupt the proceedings. Hitchcock never appears in the play; instead, a sullen assistant named Peggy Robinson (Mouhibian) occasionally materializes to bark her master’s orders at Hedren. While sexually alluring in heels and tight skirt, Robinson obviously chafes under her brunette status as a second-class citizen in Hitchock’s world. Her lines are the playwrights’ most overt judgment of Hitchock’s personality; they also happen to be the show’s most stilted and bring it to a dead stop. The writers get their points across better through comic action, as when Paglia memorably demonstrates to Hedren that sometimes a handbag is not always just a handbag. Certainly, their play’s final moment, when Hedren walks away from the film, alone but independent, as the actor-crows watch, is completely gripping — and it occurs in total silence. Overall, TheSpyAnts have given us an intelligent romp nicely balanced between the ridiculous and sublimely ridiculous. The 15-member cast demonstrates both energy and discipline, with Lori Evans Taylor seeming to grow into her role as much as Hedren did hers, and Bunton turning in a wry performance that never goes too far overboard. Working with what seems to be a tight budget, Ford has marshaled some fine technical talents to give her production a sparkle far exceeding its means. Joel Daavid’s flexible set invokes a sunburst of weathered slats of wood and a skewed window frame to suggest the Brenners’ farmhouse, and readily lends itself to quick scene changes. Mouhibian’s costumes play with the idea that their wearers’ unruly bodies must be bound by repressive clothing; even Taylor’s blond wig, with its Novakian whorl, indicates the twisted, vertiginous Hitchcock universe. I recently had lunch at Bodega Bay’s Tides restaurant, built on the site of the diner featured in the film. There was Birds iconography everywhere — framed lobby cards from the film, autographed photos of some of the actors, a sign announcing a September appearance of Hedren. Like the Hitching Post restaurant profiled in the film Sideways, the Tides clearly enjoys the curse of pop fame. My parents, who had taken me to see The Birds 41 years ago, quietly ate the overpriced salmon, then showed me the Tides’ gift shop, which offered equally expensive DVDs of The Birds and some Hitchcock books. Since my long-ago birthday trip to the movies I’ve come to realize that The Birds was never a horror movie, camp commentary on fashion nor even the apocalyptic fable of Daphne DuMaurier’s Cold War–tinged short story. Instead, it was a glimpse of the adult world and what the duties of that tense world would entail — always looking over one’s shoulder, stuffing ashtrays with lost hopes and speaking to other adults from across a room. How lucky children are not to know a metaphor when they see one.

THE BIRDS: A Tail of Ornithic Proportions| By DAVID CERDA and PAULINE PANG | TheSpyAnts at the McCadden Place Theater, 1157 McCadden Pl., Hollywood | Through August 28 | (323) 860-8786

LA Splash review of "The Birds"

The Birds

By Jane Emery

Deep in the center of this famed little town called Hollywood, I made my way to the McCadden Place Theatre to see the west coast premiere of 'The Birds'.  Like most theatres, the lobby was small, but as I entered, I was immediately transported to the world of The Birds'. Joel Daavid's set design was incredible and Bosco Flanagan's lighting was mesmerizing and dramatic, giving the look many dimensions. Both captured the energy and vibe of the story in an extremely clever way. It was like walking into a themed Disneyland production, and I mean that in a good way. It took you to another place, and as you stepped into it, you knew you were going for a ride.

And quite a ride it was. The play takes us on two journeys simultaneously and intrinsically.

Director Kelly Ann Ford explains 'David Cerda has created a piece that give me two worlds to explore: The theatrical and the cinematic. He has turned the world of the movie upside down into a place where I can explore an extreme comedic, non-naturalistic and stylized form that is pure theatre through and through. At the same time, he has provided the world behind the scenes of the movie, where I can delve into the absurd yet realistic aspects of the tragic-drama that went into the making of the film. This part of the work is grounded in a realism-based acting style more akin to what we're used to seeing in the movie theatre. These two worlds challenge the versatility and craft of the actors and myself on every level. This kind of work is a rush to perform because 1) it's not easy and 2) because it requires us to have enormous faith in our audience to suspend their disbelief and join us on the ride - both scary and thrilling prospects for any artist."

The cast that worked together so succinctly, their physicality, movement in their use of the space and their ability to navigate the text and double story, added an extra entertaining element.

Another glorious element that made it such an enjoyable experience was Lori Evans Taylor in the role of Tippi. Her comedic range, solid acting talents, and her ability to navigate two simultaneous stories within a story flawlessly made it worth the price of admission alone. She kept me with her on her journey, experiencing it as she was. That's the best you can hope for. Besides all this, she performed physical stunts like an expert. This girl is a pro's pro.

Maria Tomas was a dynamo of husky-voiced energy, very multi-fasceted within her character. She made it great fun.

Last but definitely not least was the amazing sound design by Dino Andrade, which within itself, formed the story, the drama, the emotions and gave this piece added dimension to make it a total experience. It was rich and generous and completed this work of art, down to the same mechanical seagull sounds used in the original film.

This cast does a masterful job, taking the audience on a fun and artistic experience, including Brett Hren, playing the handsomely wicked Mitch, Eric Bunton (Lydia), Darcy Halsey (Camille), Randi Pareira (Mrs. Bundy), Marina Mouhibian (Peggy Robinson), Patrik Carlok (Mrs. MacGruder), Kim Estes (Birdman), Kendall Linzee (Sam), hilarious Hal Perry (Cathy Brenner), Linc Hand (Mike), Maureen Darosa, and Shelby Kyle...thank you all for entertaining us so well.

This is a SpyAnts Production. They formed in 2000, and are known for sold-out, highly successful shows. The Los Angeles Times wrote "...the hopes are high for this group because their passion for the theatre hits all the right notes"...and I wholeheartedly agree. The SpyAnts are committed to serving the community by providing quality theatre and continually being involved with local organizations. Having a non-profit status, they have been able to raise money for organizations such as Glaad, Project Angel Food, AIDS Project L.A., and AIDS Ride L.A. They are currently working with The Hollywood and Long Beach Boys and Girls Club on developing an after school theater troup that will lead to the production of several plays. Visit www.thespyants.com

"The Birds" runs from July 29th through August 28th, Thursday thru Saturday at 8:00 p.m., Sundays at 2:00 p.m. For tickets to "The Birds" call: (323) 860-8786