Drugs lead to violence for Lucy (Chelsea Grace) and Larry (Larry Fleischman) in Peter Welch’s Larry & Lucy.
A teenage, runaway heroin addict with daddy issues and a former graffiti artist long past his glory days explore the borders of friendship and codependency in Larry & Lucy, a gritty little slice-of-life one-act spinning its wheels on the intimate basement stage at Theater for the New City. Playwright Peter Welch propels his title characters forward through a whirlwind couple of days in and out of Los Angeles while simultaneously pulling them back to their unhappy pasts via brief flashbacks woven throughout the piece. If the duo’s actions are at best unusual, and at worst highly unlikely or confusing, the offbeat performances and noir atmosphere conjured up by director Joe John Batista make for a trippy ride to the West Coast.
Larry (Fleischman) lashes out at his doctor (Peter Welch). Photographs by John Phelps.
Welch is also a filmmaker, and his cinematic sensibility is apparent from the start. The play begins with opening credits and speeding cars projected onto an upstage screen as hip ’70s music plays in the background. That screen also serves as a scrim behind which the characters strike poses in shadowy relief throughout the night, creating haunting images that add a surreal moodiness to the work.
Seemingly forgetting that he is writing for the stage at all, the first scene is set inside a Toyota Prius during a driving rainstorm. Folding chairs substitute for plush interiors here, with Larry (Larry Fleischman) at the wheel as a grumpy artist turned Uber driver and Lucy (Chelsea Grace), his customer, in the back seat. The awkwardness of that staging is eventually abandoned as the two get out of the car, rain be damned, to provide some exposition. Lucy has hired Larry a half dozen times in the recent past to drive her from the methadone clinic where she is failing at rehab back to the homeless shelter where she is too young to stay legally. Providing sexual favors to the shelter manager has secured Lucy a space nonetheless, as well as an emotional-support animal, a chinchilla named Freddie.
Larry has no such emotional support, having long ago been left at the altar (“Maybe the slap I gave my fiancée at the rehearsal dinner had something to do with it.”). But he senses that Lucy might help soothe his loneliness, so soon enough he is buying her tacos and letting her crash at his lowly apartment, even as she is shooting heroin one moment and rebounding with Zoloft and Subutex the next. Subutex, Lucy explains, is “the number one smuggled opiate in the U.S. prison system,” and also a substitute for methadone in treating addiction. They also, quite succinctly, get to the heart of their relationship:
Larry: But I really want to help you, Lucy.
Lucy: But you can’t help me. Nobody can but me, get it!
After Lucy leaves Freddie in a utility closet on the grounds of the shelter, she and Larry concoct a plan to leave the apartment and sneak back to rescue the chinchilla. This scheme, thankfully for all, is quickly forgotten when Larry suggests they head to another part of town to see a mural he had painted during his heyday, at a time when he had upped his game as a graffiti artist to become a fairly successful muralist, doing paintings across the country. When they arrive to find the mural has been replaced by a new condominium, the action becomes even more chaotic.
A TSA agent (Welch) holds Lucy (Grace) and Larry (Fleischman) in an airport holding cell.
In short order, violence erupts, additional Subutex is ingested, and a flight to Atlantic City is attempted. That they make it only as far as a drug-addled layover in Dallas is indicative of an ending that also stops short, with Lucy deciding to return to her father in Kansas City and Larry headed back to L.A. to face an uncertain future.
As Larry, Fleischman, with his raggedy, hunched-over demeanor and raspy voice, provides an exciting and quirky portrait of a man who may have inhaled from one spray-paint can too many. Grace, whose hair and skin are both radiant, does not look like the heroin fiend who, to Larry’s eyes, hasn’t “eaten in three days,” but her loud and physical performance makes her an interesting threat for Fleischman to play against. Welch steps in to play a handful of minor roles including Lucy’s dad, Larry’s doc and, at the performance I attended, a police officer who had to ad-lib when Grace accidentally busted out of a pair of handcuffs with one strong tug.
Larry & Lucy plays at Theater for the New City (155 First Ave.) through April 17. Evening performances are at 8 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday; matinees are at 3 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and information, visit theaterforthenewcity.net/shows/larry-and-lucy.
