‘Fate Complete’ @ Ochre House Theater

Photos by Trent Stephenson

—Jan Farrington

A threesome of married couples, strivers all, throw their lives together in Kevin Grammer's brand-new play Fate Complete, set in the Hollywood Hills in the Hippie Times—at a guess, the late ‘60s to the mid-’70s, depending on the generation you’re looking at onstage.

Evelyn and William (Carla Parker and Brian Witkowicz) are a well-known couple of the show-biz social set: she’s a retired movie actress, he’s a studio mogul. They have a beautiful view of “the Valley” out their picture window, and a blue swimming pool Evelyn only looks at through her bedroom window.

She doesn’t go out much. And William is obsessed with hedges. Hmm.

Enter the neighbors (and somehow, the wealthier couple’s go-fers and caretakers) Mary and Stephan, played by Shahada Crane and Dante Martinez. Mary helps William keep an eye on Evelyn’s medications and general welfare; Stephan pitches in on gardening jobs—but his main goal is getting this studio head to read and green-light one of the many movie scripts he’s brought by. What is William (aka Willy) doing with them all, he and we wonder?

And finally, we meet Cassandra and Billy (Christina Cranshaw and Sean Alan Stone), who come for an introductory visit—and stay to take over the story. (There’s a whiff of Virginia Woolf and All About Eve floating in the air.) He’s recently back from ‘Nam and hunting for a studio job; she’s dressed in bell-bottoms, her long hair bedecked with flowers—but more focused on her career goals than many a hippie chick.

Characters move up and down the ladder of sweet success. Cassandra is shooting for stardom, but somehow stays both ambitious and warm as she rises. Evelyn seems ever more scattered and immobilized, while her husband’s early “cool” gives way to a frightened, frazzled older version of himself. Billy, in pricey suits now, is on the way up…but can his marriage be saved?

Matthew Posey’s set design is quietly glossy and mid-century, Jessie Wallace’s costumes follow the lines of the era’s social strata—and the odd, minor-key tensions between and among the couples are set off by original music composed and performed by Ian Mead Moore and Sara Rogerson. A brief video of Cassandra (Cranshaw) as the young Evelyn, shot by Justin Locklear and Posey, leaves an unsettling vibe.

Director/playwright Grammer—also the lighting designer—uses shadows and dimmed evening tones to add atmosphere to dialogue at times, and makes emphatic use of a red spotlight that has a “Faustian bargain” aura—though you may have to decide which characters might be involved.

That’s enough about the story line—except to say that it seems by the end more engaged by the choices and “fates” of the women, and that Grammer’s intriguing portrait of a carefully concealing era that transforms into something else—letting personal truths into the light—is worth a look.

WHEN: February 8-March 1, 2025
WHERE: 825 Exposition Avenue, Dallas
WEB: ochrehousetheater.org