Teresa Thome’s ‘Warm Cheese’ is delicious

One-woman show explores love-hate relationship with mom

Review by John K. Adams

Ah! The joy of discovering that our parents were merely human and not monsters or worse! That revelation when we see them in full round, flawed but doing their imperfect best, makes us human too.

In Warm Cheese, the one-woman show staged for the Hollywood Fringe Festival, writer/performer Teresa Thome portrays her mother, often hilariously, as a darkly cynical hypochondriac with a list of maladies longer than many people’s resumes.

The title refers to the slices of individually wrapped, American cheese her mother kept ever ready in her purse to tide her daughter over until dinner. What? No Camembert?

Thome vividly describes the quest through her mother’s private effects and diaries for the secret “ultimate plan” which would put sense to her mother’s antagonistic mothering. En route, she discovers that the haunting we so fear does not stalk us “out there,” but inhabits our heads.

As we grope our way toward some semblance of clarity, it surprises us that another we meet on that dark path might be a parent. We come to realize our cherished perceptions and instincts for self-preservation are honed by the very people we once believed were antagonists.

The misperceived reality of children about the motives of their caretakers makes a sizeable sub-genre of literature. Thome’s poignant Warm Cheese is a welcome addition to that.

“Warm Cheese” is staged for the 2016 Hollywood Fringe Festival at Asylum, Studio C, located at 6488 Santa Monica Blvd. in Los Angeles. Show dates are Saturday, June 18th at 8pm and Sunday, June 26th at 2:30pm. Visit WarmCheese.com for more information.

Note: This review originally appeared in the Tolucan Times on June 18th, 2016.

‘Francis’ is somebody to love

Review by John K. Adams

Francis, Somebody to Love, written and performed by Dana Denham Marsh and directed by Mick Thyer, is going to New York. If you didn’t see it, it will return.

We are not individuals so much as collections of relationships. This one-woman show affectionately opens up the beating heart of one mother/daughter relationship. The sets are as intimate as a young girl’s journal.

Using the soundtrack of her life to transition between vignettes, Francis creates a portrait of innocence and the struggle to understand the mystery of a parent gone away, yet ever present. Francis asks the audience to help her to let go of her mother, so she can live her life. But Francis also acknowledges that her mother will always ride shotgun in her heart.

As a child, her earthy mother was the center of Francis’ universe. But just as Francis’ own identity is blossoming, she must find understanding of her mother’s withdrawal into affairs and pills. Despite her barely present father, Francis blames herself for her mother’s absence.

The conflict between who she is and who her mother wants her to be is revealed with poignant intimacy. Francis’ inner Freddy Mercury wrestles with her mother’s Joni Mitchell.

How the team of Marsh and Thyer accomplish this task so deftly, in a one woman show, is the magic of live theater. Marsh so disappears into her role, that when the performance ends, the lights reveal not a hockey-playing tomboy but a mature performer in command of her craft.

“Francis, Somebody to Love” played at the Stephanie Feury Studio Theatre, 5636 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. Call (323) 463-7378 or visit www.sfstheatre.com.

This review originally appeared in the Tolucan Times on June 12th, 2015.