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Pierce College Play Not Your Usual Theatre Fare
By Ken Fermoyle

The opening drama of Pierce College's Theater Arts Department 2011-2012 season is not “just another play.” It definitely does not resemble anything Tennessee Williams or Neil Simon ever wrote. Traditional play-goers should understand that before attending “The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow,” which runs through Sunday, October 30:

To quote director Valorie Grear, the play is a “technically complex, innovative and highly intelligent theatrical work.” In spades! How often do you find the lead character in a production creating a robotic clone of herself she can use to find her birth mother on a faraway continent—especially when that character is an agoraphobic, compulsive-obsessive, adopted Chinese 22-year-old girl
living in Calabasas? She also is so intelligent that geniuses are awed by her.

What play-goers will find is that “The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow” has more local connections than any in recent, or even far-distant, memory. As mentioned, chief protagonist (“heroine” sounds too old0fshioned, too wishywashy for Jennifer Marcus) lives in Calabasas. She appears to subsist mainly on Ameci pizzas (the one on in West Hills or the one on Topanga in Woodland Hills?). Todd (Cyrus Zoghi), the Ameci delivery boy and allyof Jenny, takes classes at Pierce. References to streets and places in the San Fernando Valley, especially the west end, pop up regularly throughout the play. This isn't surprising when you consider the play's source.

Playwright Rolin Jones is one of our own, a native of Woodland Hills! He graduated from El Camino High School and even delivered pizzas in an old Dodge Dart Swinger with the roof cut off, much like his character Todd in “Jenny Chow.” It's doubtful that the autobiographical content of Jenes' play goes much beyond that. This comedy-drama is far too fanciful and off-the-wall to have even shallow roots in real life.

Jennnifer Marcus (Jenny Kang) may be a girl genius, but she is a serious problem for her busy-executive, traditionally-oriented mother, Adele (Laura Ring, who also plays Mrs. Zhang, Jenny's birth mother). She wants Jenny to help around the house, take out the garbage, find a “real” job. The agoraphobic Jenny won't leave the house, spending most of her time in her bedroom/office on her computers.

But Jenny, unlike many girls her age, isn't sending instant messages to her girlfriends, gossiping about boys or trawling for Facebook friends. Instead, she's swaps technotalk with rocket scientists and a quirky PhD robotics expert, Dr. Yakumin (wonderfully portrayed by Dana Craig). And she isn't playing computer games. She sets up her own consulting company and designs missile guidance systems for a major hi-tech defense contractor. In return she gets spare parts she uses to create her very own robotic android, which is also a clove of herself—an alternative Jennifer Marcus or the [sur]real Jenny Chow (Kristina Reyes)! The first act ends with the coming to life—“coming to existence,” more accurately) of the robotic Jenny Chow in a halting, rigid manner that improves with repetition.

The second act has fewer comedic moments than the first. It opens to chaos, proceeds through a touching scene as the robot meets Jenny's birth mother in China. It ends with something less than a bang as Jenny gets little to help from her experience. Any drawbacks to the play are not the fault of the cast, which generally displays a high degree of acting skill. Rather, it is the temporary venue, a tent-like structure in the Performing Arts Center. (The campus theater on the hill is being upgraded.). The floor is flat, not tiered as in most theaters, so unless you are in the first two rows you view the stage through a forst of heads, hairdos and hats. The structure is also cavernous, so the acoustics are not great. My suggestion: sit up front on the right side, since much of the action takes place in Jennifer's bedroom at stage right. For tickets and other information, call (818)719-6488.

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