{"id":111611,"date":"2026-05-15T10:01:36","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T17:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/?p=111611"},"modified":"2026-05-15T10:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T17:05:10","slug":"fascinatingly-different-mill-valley-dramedy-spotlights-divide-between-parents-and-son-reality-and-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/fascinatingly-different-mill-valley-dramedy-spotlights-divide-between-parents-and-son-reality-and-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Fascinatingly different\u2019 Mill Valley dramedy spotlights divide between parents and son, reality and fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Jean (left), Irv (center) and Larry discuss old photo of Irv in <\/span><\/strong><\/em>Pictures from Home<\/span><\/strong>. Photo by David Allen.<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

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By WOODY WEINGARTEN<\/strong><\/p>\n

Check out the upscale, retirement-age parents in their San Fernando Valley tract home where the wife\u2019s real estate commissions have kept them afloat for years while the husband\u2019s played golf thrice weekly and continually raged.<\/p>\n

In Pictures from Home <\/em>at the Marin Theatre through May 31, the lives and personalities of the Sultan parents \u2014 Irv and Jean \u2014 are methodically deconstructed by their demi-adult son, Larry, who frequently sleeps over on weekends after traveling down from Greenbrae. Instead of a stuffed animal, he\u2019s long been caressing a camera and recorder apparently borrowed from the San Francisco Art Institute and California College of the Arts, where he\u2019s been teaching.<\/p>\n

All three performers are Equity pros; all three easily bring their real-life characters to life on a cluttered stage set dominated by a large screen onto which still-photo after still-photo extracted from home-movie reels is projected.<\/p>\n

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Larry, as play\u2019s narrator, has fond memory of portrait of his dad. Photo by David Allen.<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

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Irv, a razor salesman and Schick V.P. who bears only a slight resemblance to everyman Willie Loman and who\u2019s depressed because no one seemingly can afford \u201chopes and dreams\u201d anymore, firmly believes photos depict events as they are. Larry, the son who\u2019s decidedly more artistic, has spent the last 10 years working on a photo-cum-book project to prove that pictures can show more than bare reality, that they can judiciously recall memories in a way that some might label fiction or exaggeration.<\/span><\/p>\n

He also acts as the 105-minute, intermission-less, fascinatingly different play\u2019s narrator.<\/p>\n

Jean, meanwhile, tries to skirt the ongoing debate, has convinced herself she\u2019s \u201cin charge,\u201d and grumbles that she\u2019d \u201cjust like a couple of nice photos for the fridge.\u201d<\/p>\n

The one-act Pictures from Home<\/em> is sprinkled with lots of verbal and<\/em> physical humor, so much you might think it would be enough to leaven the extremely weighty drama. Not quite.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because what they\u2019re discussing is too personal, too intimate, too raw. It\u2019s visceral rather than cerebral, even when comparing generations.<\/p>\n

The problem, if it is <\/em>any problem, is that playwright Sharr White and director Jonathan Moscone have re-created a family that\u2019s virtually everybody\u2019s, regardless of ethnicity, socio-economic status, or geography. \u201cThat was my<\/em> father up there,\u201d one exiting theatergoer was heard to say.<\/p>\n

Dad is played brilliantly by Victor Talmadge as a sad, vulnerable loudmouth who talks over everybody and tries to emasculate his son because he feels powerless himself. Though he appears to lack empathy, he contends that the \u201ckey to success is empathy.\u201d Mom, portrayed by Suzan Koosin, flawlessly spends a good part of the play flitting from one edge of the stage to another while trying to get her husband and son to put down their verbal swords. Larry is well-crafted by Dan Cantor as an immature, cowed offspring unlikely ever to grow up.<\/p>\n

The dramedy, which is based on a photo memoir by the real Larry Sultan, opened to critical acclaim on Broadway in 2023, with Nathan Hale as Irv.<\/p>\n

No matter who\u2019s in the role, though, when Larry\u2019s proposal becomes a reality, Irv neither understands nor accepts the artsy concept and still feels invaded. \u201cI see you\u2019ve got pretty much every photo I don\u2019t like<\/em> in the book,\u201d he bemoans.<\/p>\n

Pictures from Home<\/em> will run at the Marin Theatre, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, through May 31. Tickets: $38 to $94, plus a $6 handling fee per total order. Info: 415-388-5208 or www.MarinTheatre.org<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sherwood \u201cWoody\u201d Weingarten, a longtime voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle and the author of four books, can be contacted by email at\u00a0voodee@sbcglobal.net<\/a> or via his websites,<\/em>https:\/\/woodyweingarten.com<\/a>\u00a0and https:\/\/vitalitypress.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  By WOODY WEINGARTEN Check out the upscale, retirement-age parents in their San Fernando Valley tract home where the wife\u2019s real estate commissions have kept them afloat for years while…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":4.4,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-111611","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-woody-weingarten"},"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":true,"span_bottom":"