Nocturne

Adam Rapp’s Nocturne takes its title from a short work for piano written by Edvard Grieg. It is, like many of Grieg’s lyric pieces for piano, ineffably beautiful, and at the same time, wistful.

The text begins, “Fifteen years ago, I killed my sister.” She dies a particularly grisly death in a bizarre accident when the car that the protagonist is driving experiences brake failure. That incident of course devastates the lives of the surviving family members. The father threatens his 17-year-old son with a gun. His mother soon after abandons the family and begins a descent into insanity. The young man leaves his home in Joliet, Illinois and moves to New York City, where the former piano prodigy seeks refuge in books, acquires an Underwood, and becomes a writer. He and a lovely redheaded girl fall for each other, but he finds himself unable to adequately physically respond to her.

For the Los Angeles production, director Rob DeRosa has reimagined the piece in accordance with a concept that he states more closely conforms to the playwright’s original intent: As a solo piece, performed by one actor as a memory play, in which the audience is invited to travel the haunted corridors of the son’s mind as he remembers the awful events of 15 years ago, and everything that came after — all the grief, the anguish, the desolation, and then the emergence of art, literature and romance as they encroach upon his life, the effects of stars and moonlight — A young man’s long journey toward redemption. Michael Cormier stars as The Son.

What the critics are saying:

“Cormier is fantastic…the whole play is fine fine fine…go see Nocturne before it closes.”
— Robert Axelrod, Reviewplays.com

“Cormier is remarkable in this tender, highly emotional role.”
— Mary Montoro, Socal.com