PERFECT QUIET PLACE

Ventura County has a thriving arts community. There are full theatrical seasons being offered by more than a dozen performance spaces spread out over ten major cities. However, original full length works are a rarity in the area. The world premier of Perfect Quite Place, presented by the Elite Theatre Company in Oxnard, is a rare opportunity for local theatre patrons to attend the initial performances of a previously unproduced work close to home.

Perfect Quiet Place tells the story of a young girl who is trapped in a world where her perceived reality is becoming increasingly suspect. The action opens on Hannah (Andrea Muller) with two of her schoolmates (Annie Sherman and Hayley Silvers) at a private high school in California. Her musical studies are forced to take a back seat to the disruptive and sometimes downright odd behavior of her friends and the school’s night watchman (Michael Chandler), whose presence is a source of both concern and mockery for the teenage girls. Hannah brokers a fragile peace between her volatile friends and succeeds in conversing with the night watchman, but in doing so, becomes increasingly aware that what she knows as truth is far from reality. When things begin to disappear from her room, Hannah drifts between uncertainty and unease and is ultimately compelled to confront the ever-changing world in which she lives. She soon finds herself under the care of a doctor who further muddles her life picture, leading Hannah to exclaim "You’re curing me of everything good in my life." No longer able to trust her own mind, she is flung into a life and death battle for survival that culminates in a ferocious physical encounter that she can only escape by overcoming her own fear and rising above the chaos that surrounds her. In the end, she is left reaching out to something unknown, longing for escape or redemption.

The versatile pale green dorm room set fits well the three-sided stage in the pleasant surroundings of the intimate lower level playhouse, and the technical elements are strong for the most part as is the pleasing theatrical ambiance missing in many of the southland’s smaller venues. Author Tom Eubanks offers a script that seems to delight in keeping audiences off kilter with varying degrees of success. The direction, though pedestrian at times, succeeds best in the final moments of the show and is unafraid of the ambiguous ending that is strangely fitting given the unorthodox structure of the play. Each member of the four person cast delivers moments of effectiveness in their difficult dual roles, although it is the youthful Muller who accomplishes the most laudable feat in her role as the distressed heroine of the story. Onstage from beginning to end, she successfully brings a childlike exuberance and fresh-faced hopefulness to the character of Hannah, despite the trials that she must endure. The Elite Theatre Company’s production of Perfect Quiet Place is a praiseworthy venture in the ring of presenting original works, and sounds loudly the bell for other small theatres to do the same.

Perfect Quiet Place runs until May 27th at the Elite Theatre Company in Oxnard. http://www.elitetheatre.org/