Best bets on stage and screen: ‘The Night Alive’ and ‘McFarland USA’

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For Geffen Playhouse artistic director, Randall Arney, this marks the third time he has directed a Conor McPherson play.  The first was “The Weir” in 2000, then “The Seafarer” in 2008 and now “The Night Alive.” 

For Geffen Playhouse artistic director, Randall Arney, this marks the third time he has directed a Conor McPherson play.  The first was “The Weir” in 2000, then “The Seafarer” in 2008 and now “The Night Alive.” 

According to Arney, “Ireland creates wonderful storytellers.  Conor has a real skill at capturing the loneliness of the Irish male.  They’re stoic people, yet so human.… In ‘The Night Alive’ Tommy, who’s been sidetracked and is living in a room in his uncle’s house, brings a bloodied girl into the room.  He interrupted a fight where she was being beaten up.  You could file this play under, ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’ He doesn’t know what he’s unleashing on himself and his friends by bringing her in.”

The set, by scenic designer Takeshi Kata, is a drab room in an Edwardian house in Dublin, with a bathroom in the back.  Dirty towels, bedding, and plastic garbage bags are strewn about.  The disarray of the room is like the disarray in Tommy’s life and mind.  As the play begins Tommy (Paul Vincent O’Connor) enters with a young girl, Aimee, usually played by Fiona O’ Shaughnessy.  The night we attended Aimee was performed by her understudy, Sasha Higgins.

Her presence in Tommy’s life upsets his pal, a rather dim-witted co-worker named Doc (Dan Donohue) who feels he’s losing his place not only in Tommy’s bleak life, but in his flat.  Tommy’s Uncle Maurice (Denis Arndt) is also not pleased since Tommy has an estranged  family.  The relationship is over, but in his uncle’s eyes, marriage is a bond parted only by death.  And last, but by no means least, there is a dark, foreboding character, Kenneth (Peter O’Meara) who shows up, making matters much, much worse for all concerned.

The acting is well done, but the story is quite dreary, even though at first you think Tommy’s luck will change with the presence of Aimee who gets him to want to turn his life around.  While there is dark humor throughout, the premise is quite bleak and the ending may leave you a bit up in the air.    

“The Night Alive,” at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood, through March 15.  For info: geffenplayhouse.com, 310-208-5454.  Running time 1 hour 40 minutes with no intermission.

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Lately many films have dealt with the lives of actual individuals.  In fact half of the Oscar nominated films for 2014 were based on the lives of real, not fictional, people, films like “American Sniper,” “The Theory of Everything,” “Foxcatcher” and “The Imitation Game.”  Now, at the start of 2015, Disney gives us the uplifting true story of coach Jim White (Kevin Costner) and his team of unlikely runners from a small high school in McFarland, a town in the San Joaquin Valley not far from Bakersfield.

Disney’s “McFarland USA” begins with a pep talk by Coach White that goes really wrong.  As a result he’s fired.  Then cut to White and his family on their way to his new job in McFarland where he will be working once again as a football coach.  He and his family are not happy with the move, but as time goes by Costner notices that his athletes, while not the greatest football players he has ever worked with, are actually excellent runners.  Often he watches some of his players as they run to work in the fields before school starts. Amazed by their speed as he drives along side them,  he decides to create a team of long-distance runners, confident that his students have what in takes to win in state-wide competitions.

The film, inspired by a true 1987 team coached by Jim White in McFarland, Calif., is a feel-good movie in the best sense. During the course of the film the coach and his students turn their lives around, moving from losers to eventual winners.  White’s family also undergoes a personal transformation as they get to know the people in their new community. 

Things don’t come easy for the kids or for Costner.  He not only has to convince the principal to let him start a team, he has to learn how to coach a sport he knows nothing about.  He also has to convince the parents of his runners that their sons’ lives will change dramatically if they are allowed to run and take an active part in getting an education. Being successful in sports could lead to scholarships and a better life.

William Broyles, Jr. wrote the screenplay with input from several other co-writers and has captured the sense of hard work and camaraderie that went into forming an outstanding team of runners. 

White, affectionately nicknamed Blanco by his boys, eventually turns a rag-tag group of runners into state champions over and over again.   Under the direction of Niki Caro the story moves at a fast pace, just like Coach White’s team does.  And you don’t have to be a sports enthusiast to get caught up in this story about hard-work, community cooperation and long-distance running.  I personally found myself rooting for Blanco’s team of unlikely runners who eventually become state champions over and over again.

“McFarland USA” is uplifting and exciting, and best of all, you leave the theater feeling great.  At least I know I did.  Rated PG for thematic material, some violence and language.