Review: WIPEOUT at Studio Theatre

The final play of the season at Studio Theatre comes with some environmental warnings. The production includes “nontoxing vaping, loud music, and controlled water spray, some of which might hit the audience.”

The title of Aurora Real de Asua’s play, after all, is “Wipeout.” Its setting is the Pacific Ocean. Before it’s all over, its cast will sing snippets of Beach Boys songs, wear swimwear, strike classic surf poses and yes, spray water

Still, there’s no surfboards in sight. 

Rather, in an unusual turn apparently unique to this production, director Danilo Gambini has all the action take place inside the waterfront apartment three elderly women are renting for a weekend in Santa Monica where they plan to take surfing lessons.

There are flights of fancy where they get up on coffee tables and pretend to be out on the water. But mostly they are in this very exacting practical indoor set by Jimmy Stubbs. They go to the fridge while talking as if out on the sand. 

That the three old friends are pushing 70 and one of them flirting with dementia makes one think this might be one more delusion. But no, it’s just how they staged it. 

The main point is that the women interact, look back on their lives, bicker a bit, reminisce to childhood scenes, try to settle grudges and individually take surf lessons with a young bro that’s their instructor. 

Real de Asua’s intent is to show how strong elderly people are — and how game they are to do something different. But that’s probably not news to the even more elderly crowd that caught an opening weekend matinee. Throwing in the occasional bathos amid gags that faintly echo the “Golden Girls,” it has the slightly patronizing feel of a play about old people written by a young person. 

For all their petty differences, memories and strong feelings the three women may have for each other, the hard won wisdom seems to come from the young instructor, talking about waves being nothing more than a universal energy moving underwater. 

A terrific cast nearly succeeds in making it all seaworthy, though. 

Naomi Jacobson is strong as the woman who organized the event and is surprised to find she takes well to the water. Katherine Cortez is fine as the brash and sometimes brittle character who always wanted to learn to surf her whole life. Amid her coarse stories and exuberance she’s hiding some vulnerabilities. The elegant Delissa Reynolds thinks all this activity is beneath her but she too is trying to connect, as memories resurface of past husbands. 

Alec Ludacka is the fish out of water here — a young man with cheery positivity and a tinge of philosophy that’s natural for him to play.

Director Gambini adds some realism by having characters talk over one another in the beginning, as if in an Altman movie. Later, it’s balanced by some long pauses of silence as well, which I suppose are equally realistic. 

Sometimes when one pair of characters have a long conversation, the other two stay on stage, leaning on each other as if asleep. Singing “God Only Knows” at the end has the feel of being tacked on since Brian Wilson’s death earlier this month.

The sound design of Bailey Trierweiler & UptownWorks brings in some subtle sounds of waves here and there. And Andrew R. Cissna’s lighting does shift to blue at times, but not as much as you’d think when evoking an ocean.

As for the water, they open bottles of Fiji and squirt it on each other at one point. There’s also a hose that comes out of the bathroom, and even a more dramatic environmental turn at the end.

Still, nobody in the audience got wet. 

Running time: Nearly two hours, no intermission.

Photo credit: Delissa Reynolds, Naomi Jacobson and Katherine Cortez in “Wipeout.” Photo by Margot Schulman. 

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