SEARCH AND DESTROY reviews
Backstage West STAGE SPOT FEATURE Christian Levatino
For the first five minutes Christian Levatino is on stage as Kim in Howard Korder's Search and Destroy, he does nothing but smoke and eavesdrop, and yet his indulgent expression and relaxed poise -- not to mention the 1980s power suit and slightly skeevy mustache -- tell us as much about his character as if he'd just delivered a 20-minute monologue. Search and Destroy tells the story of Martin, an obnoxious yuppie loser determined to reach the big time.
Kim helps him along, and Levatino has worked carefully to make sure his character doesn't come across as entirely wicked. "There's something about his candor that intrigued me; he was just such an honest person," Levatino says. "In the end he's trying to help Martin; he gives Martin exactly what Martin asks for. I thought that during the finale, if I could make the audience care about Kim, and maybe be torn between Kim and Martin, that would be intriguing."
The second time we see Levatino's character, he is sitting cross-legged on the desk in his office, smoking profusely. Again he uses body language to convey a mix of amusement, bemusement, and above all a laid-back sense of superiority. It is not surprising that so much of Levatino's character comes across through his physicality. "I develop a role from the outside and then go in," the actor says. "I might not know what to do with a character, but if I know how he looks, then I know I can find it somehow. What I love to do is videotape all the rehearsals. It's wonderful to be able to go back after a four-hour rehearsal and then just watch the footage and see exactly what you're doing. It really does help bring you to the next level. I've talked to a lot of actors who refuse to watch themselves, and I don't understand it, because if you expect an audience to come pay and watch you, you should know exactly what you're giving them."
Levatino is the founder and artistic director of the Gangbusters Theatre Company. And he has had recent success with his writing: His short film will be produced by the company in July, and his first book, The Attempted Assassination of the American Theatre, will be published by Random House in 2008.
Review from LA WEEKLY By Neal Weaver on February 13, 2007
Con man, braggart and down-market talent-booker Martin Merkheim (Bart Petty) has bought into the whole New Age self-fulfillment program, and now fancies he’s one of the spiritual elite. He becomes obsessed with a high-minded novel by self-help guru Dr. Waxling (Hutchins Foster) and wants to make a movie of it. His delusions of competence don’t fool the good doctor, whose girl (Sierra Fisk) he has inadvertently seduced.
Eventually, his boundless determination and gullibility lead him into the drug and horror-film trades and eventually into a murder. Through all this, he learns the art of intimidation, which he considers requisite for success. Howard Korder’s 1992 play receives an excellent production by director Scott Cummins, with fine performances from Petty, Foster, Fisk, and Christian Levatino as a charming but sinister businessman. Korder displays a fine acid touch in this tale of the American Dream gone awry.
Review from LA SPLASH By Alex Palmer on January 23, 2007
Near the end of “Search and Destroy” a character says, “We make our own world,” one of the play's many self-help aphorisms. The play's lead, Martin Mirkheim (Bart Petty), tries hard to make his own world, creating and recreating himself after each failure, but his efforts lead only to more spectacular failures.
“Search and Destroy”, playing at Theatre 68 on Sunset through March 1st, follows Martin on this sad, blackly comic odyssey from one humiliation to another. He begins as just a bad businessman who finds himself forty thousand dollars in debt to the Florida Bureau of Taxation. Instead of dealing with his tax evasion, Martin decides to be more “future-focused”, abandons his wife, and sets out to make a film adaptation of the self-help novel he claims has changed his life (a Siddhartha meets Atlas Shrugged for yuppies called "Daniel Strong").
But Martin's journey is one of self-destruction rather than self-discovery. An attempt to meet with the book's author, Dr. Waxling (performed with macho grace by Hutchins Foster), leaves Martin beaten and handcuffed. His desperate efforts to raise the money for the film drive him to dealing cocaine and even riskier behavior until all his ideals have been long forgotten. Positive thinking can only do so much when you've got a gun in your face.
Playing a man with no sense of self is a challenge Petty handles skillfully. Beginning as a tensely smiling people-pleaser who politely avoids dealing with life's discomforts, Martin transforms into a man who must find strength somewhere, anywhere, when everything comes crashing down. Petty plays Martin with an effective awkwardness and naive corruptibility that make his difficulties more funny than sad.
Besides Petty, the play has several brief but wonderful comic performances. There's Foster's Dr. Waxling, Chet Grissom's irritable and staccato-speaking Robert, and Matthew Heron's pit-bull-in-a-bow-tie performance as Waxling's assistant Roger to name three. The most sustained comic role is Christian Levatino's coolly amoral Kim. Sporting a Pat O'Brien mustache and speaking in a smooth lilt, Levatino plays the devil on Martin's shoulder with a sinister subtlety, seeming surprised and delighted by his own lack of moral compunction.
The bleak set is comprised of concrete walls and black geometric blocks that are rearranged throughout the show to form tables, bus stops, or whatever the scene requires. The mutability of the scenery matches Martin's own inconsistent identity, just as the jarring (and a little too frequent) jazz interludes keep the audience as ill-at-ease as Martin is himself. The effect is a deliberately off-balance production that would be distracting if it weren't so appropriate to the play.
“Search and Destroy” marks an unusual collaboration between two successful Los Angeles theater companies-Gangbusters and the maD Scene-and despite the feeling of unease the play creates, the actors gel nicely. Originally produced in 1990, the play was originally a reaction to the Me Generation and sense of endless possibilities of the early internet age, but its cynicism toward constant self-esteem building and self-delusion still makes for thought-provoking viewing in 2007.
Review from BACKSTAGE WEST By Wenzel Jones on Jan 30, 2007
Gather round and learn as our hero makes mistake after mistake, hits rock bottom, and turns his life around, achieving his every dream. Except the instructional parts have been left out.
Howard Korder's exploration of cultural follies follows the decidedly unpleasant Martin (Bart Petty), a compulsive liar who thinks fear and respect go hand in hand. He simply wants to produce a film based on an adventure novel of sorts, written by a small-time self-help guru with whom Martin is inexplicably obsessed. A raft of bad decisions follows. The penultimate scene has Martin standing by a fresh corpse beside a New Jersey road having been forced to bail on a quarter-million-dollar loan acquired to effect a cocaine deal gone bad. Final scene? Martin in Hollywood (under another name) producing the movie he set out to make in the first scene. Plausibility? None.
That the onus of carrying the show rests on Petty's shoulders is unfortunate. Although the actor displays a low-key proficiency, the role is so relentlessly unpleasant that a performer needs charm to make the audience want to sit around for the better part of two hours. As played by Petty, Martin comes off as the type of character from whom you would back away at a party, a smile frozen on your face, an unspoken prayer of deliverance on your lips. Christian Levatino turns in a fine performance as a sort of Lampwick to Martin's Pinocchio, exuding the proper mix of serpentine good looks and a comfortable amorality. Just about everything in his performance seems right.
David Castellani, as a coke-driven politico, is one of the few other actors with a part large enough to do anything interesting with. Rather than fill out the small parts with a few fun character actors, director Scott Cummins has stocked the show with more than a dozen other bodies, leading to a disjointed production with little flow. It's not clear whether this was done so all company members would get stage time or so there would be sufficient crew to move the geometric set pieces about, a task that displays impressive traffic control, if not alacrity.
ACCESSIBLY LIVE OFF-LINE By Rich Borowy on Jan 23, 2007
The Gangbusters Theatre and The maD Scene Theatre Companies present Howard Korder's SEARCH AND DESTROY, a bizarre tale about how one man's obsession becomes his fate and destiny.
Bart Petty is Martin Mirkheim. He's a small time businessman living in south Florida. His business is a failure, his marriage is on the rocks, and he owes the state of Florida some $40,000 in back taxes. He doesn't have the money to pay back the state, but he does seem to have hope in a book that he's been reading. It's a novel about success written by a Dr. Waxler, a celebrity self-help advice person who makes it big on the lecture circuit and has his own TV show appearing on late night cable ...Martin becomes so obsessed by this book, he wants to make it into a movie. Alas, he needs to meet Dr. Waxling to buy the rights. Upon chasing the doctor to his "world" headquarters in Dallas, as well as to one of his lectures out of town, Martin learns that he needs a half million dollars for the rights, and is now desperate to get the necessary funds to make this still nonexistent film. In dire straights, he gets in contact with Kim (Christian Levatino), a New York businessman he met at a party a few weeks before. Through his connections, he devices a plan where Martin can make a big profit in buying and selling a large quantity of coke. Martin is now at the point of no return, as he challenges himself into getting his quest done. The question remains; will Martin achieve his goal in getting the "king" of self-help's written words to the big screen? Will Martin have the money to make the movie, as well as paying off the Florida IRS? All emotions for Martin go full tilt as a simple man's desire become bigger than expected.
This play is one of those stories that show how one's "American Dream" can turn into a twisted nightmare in an oddball way. The entire story performs as a post-modern Twilight Zone episode, featuring a man on his mission and the tanglement he encounters, complete with an ending that isn't one that the audience members would ever expect.
The play is also full of slick and greasy caricatures; they ain't the "bad guys", but they are not all heroes either! Scott Cummins directs this work using minimal sets designed by Danny Cistone witch maximizes its words, characters, and content. And the cast is also terrific as those who help and/or hurt Martin along his way to fame and piece of mind!
Those appearing are (in order of their stage appearance), Stephanie Manglares, Amy Farrington, Chet Grissom, Sierra Fisk, Mathew Heron, Mancini Graves, Hutchins Foster, Trent Hopkins, Fontaine, David Guerra, David Castellani, Mary Kelsey, and Matt Mann.
SEARCH AND DESTROY isn't motivational, nor will it present any insights. It's just another story of one's idea that goes wrong right from the start. It does bring a moral to those that want to change the world; don't!
PRESS RELEASE FOR SEARCH AND DESTROY
“Search and Destroy” is a special show, pooling the talents of two of the city’s much-praised and more unconventional companies, under the guidance of an award-winning director.
The show’s narrative is very much a piece of our times, and could happen only in America.
Martin Mirkheim is a loser, in debt to the Florida Bureau of Taxation for over 40 grand in back taxes. His marriage is shattered and his entertainment booking business is a failure. He is, however, obsessed with a novel written by a self-improvement guru to which Martin has developed a cult-like attachment.
Frightened and weak, Martin is nonetheless in love with the enduring notion that America is, as it has ever been, a land of limitless possibilities. Martin hustles, embarking on a scheme to produce a feature film about the novel in his quest not to just make money, but to achieve something of a life that matters. He enlists the aid of his guru’s lady, to his personal peril.
One more problem: Martin’s objectives require great wads of money to pull off. How can one acquire large quantities of capital? The answer should be obvious: By becoming a high-end dope dealer.
This buys Martin more trouble. High-rolling pharmaceutical businessmen are not known for their constancy in financial matters, and tend to have unpleasant dispositions and violent streaks.
Martin’s quest for success, in a milieu that will kill you rather than let you achieve your dreams, leads to a completely unexpected conclusion.
The Gangbusters Theatre Company continues on its mission to present 20th Century “classics with all of their original speed and violence.” Among its more recent productions are “Streamers” (NAACP Award nominations), “Balm in Gilead” (L.A. Weekly Award nominations), a critically-acclaimed mounting “Talk Radio,” and the World Premiere stage adaptation by Leon Shanglebee of George A. Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead.”
Co-presenters The maD Scene Theatre Company have previously produced the L.A. Premiere of “The Life and Times of Tulsa Lovechild,” the U.S. Premiere of “Dirt,” and the Southern California Premiere of “I Am Yours.” This last title was produced with the assistance of a grant from the City of Culver City and received three Garland Honorable Mentions from Back Stage West.
Scott Cummins, who won an Ovation Award for directing “Killer Joe” in 2005, helms the cast for “Search and Destroy” featuring actors from both production companies. The players include: Bart Petty, Christian Levatino, Stephanie Manglaras, Matthew Heron, Sierra Fisk, Mancini Graves, Trent Hopkins, Matthew Mann, David Guerra, David Castellani, Amy Farrington, Hutchins Foster, Fontaine, Mary Kelsey and Chet Grissom.
Lindsay Jones, also an Ovation Award winner for “Killer Joe,” contributes sound design.
The remarkably prolific Howard Korder’s other plays include “Boy’s Life,” “Fun,” “The Lights,” “Night Maneuver,” “Nobody,” “Ted Williams,” and more.
“Search and Destroy” was first produced by South Coast Rep in 1990. It remains as razor-sharp in its dissection of contemporary American society and values now as when it was first produced.