Smiling Through the Apocalypse

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“Weather Girl” weathers the storm

By Tina Wyngate

The 28 th season of GableStage has arrived with a bang, opening with the superb dark comedy “Weather Girl.” Usually, we are wary of a one-person show, prepared for an array of half-baked multiple personalities. But actor Ella Olesen is mesmerizing as Stacy Gross, an ebullient Southern California weather girl who tries to keep it together in the face of blistering record-high temperatures (global warming anyone?) that threaten to ignite most of greater Los Angeles with out-of-control fires.

Every aspect of this play works, from a cracker-jack script by award-winning playwright Brian Watkins to its superb production values. Especially effective are the large-screen projections of Olesen’s appearance on live TV, lagging just a moment behind her live performance in front of the audience. Kudos to the technical magicians behind the triptych of screens that wrap the stage, and the circles of floor light that provide alternative platforms of the narrative to advance. Together, scenic designer Frank J. Oliva, lighting designer Jessica Winward, and projection designer Jamie Godwin simply transcend the limitations of the GableStage’s initimate space.

Kudos also and especially to director Nicole Stodard, whose deft guidance of this brilliantly written script keeps it always moving, always engrossing. This is stage craft at its finest.

Olesen herself is a marvel to watch, as she moves from tv studio to scenes of horrific fires to pulsating nightclubs, all enhanced by the digital manipulations of light and sound that have become the hallmark of GableStage productions under producing artistic director Bari Newport. Olesen exhibits an extraordinary range of physical expressions, postures and undulations, taking the audience along for the ride. Olesen is simply extraordinary, moving the audience through a roller coaster of emotions, from stark shock at what she is witnessing to snarky, biting humor that pulls her, and us, back from the brink.

The setting for the play is a local television station in modern day Los Angeles, where Olesen has just been given a promotion to an affiliate station in Phoenix. She does not want to go, fearing an even hotter environment than the one she is already experiencing. There are various subplots as well, including a bizarre one that involves her mother (we won’t give it away), but by-and-large this is the tale of a zealous young journalist who must to come to grips with her own sense of reality. It is a story for our time, both sobering and hilarious, that ultimately concludes with a glass-half-full view of life on planet earth today. This is one you don’t want to
miss.