In Search of Elaina

Written by Kara Ayn Napolitano and directed by Joy Donze

The Steve & Marie Sgouros Theatre at The Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street, 3rd Floor, NYC

September 5 - 22

Photos by Al Foote III

‘In Search of Elaina’ is haunting, heartwarming show about your roots, your home - and confronting your past. Its first act was gripping, funny and heartbreaking, but the second act (particularly the last 20 minutes) felt as though the energy fizzled, leaving me with unanswered questions.

The play follows Annette (also known as Annie Ray), a working woman living her dreams in New York City. When she gets a call that her high school boyfriend (Johnny) passed away, she decides to go back to California with her current boyfriend, and reconnect with people she hasn’t spoken to in 10 years.

Here, she meets Johnny’s family and friends that she knew in high school. This is absolutely when the story began to pick up, with the snappy pace of the writing shining with the brilliant performances from each of the actors. Without being overbearing, Napolitano’s dialogue lets us into the world of these characters, with heart, humor and pain. While each actor played their characters with an incredible ease and confidence, the absolute stand-out for me was Alexandra Gellner’s performance as Tara. Gellner portrays the complex, occasionally cruel Tara with a wonderful amount of care, as well as some of the funniest line deliveries in the whole show.

The play is a beautiful exploration of what it must be like to leave the place you swore you would, but be haunted by the people you’ve left behind as well. Throughout the show, I found myself constantly wondering what it must be like to cut all ties with your hometown in search of a new one, but always wonder what happened to the people you grew up with. Annette’s search for her high school best friend Elaina is the heart of this story, with themes of loss, addiction and family permeating each line. The more Annette searching, the more elusive Elaina seems - but the more we uncover about her past, the more we root for Annette.

A majority of the play was full of quick, witty dialogue and energetic performances - it was quite literally the last few scenes where I felt things dragged on a bit. The reveal of what happened to Elaina was a bit anticlimactic, and their eventual reunion felt even more so. After going on the journey with Annette, with so much suspense surrounding what happened to her best friend, I was hoping for just a bit more of a this is it moment to really make the show come together.

All in all, ‘In Search of Elaina’ is a wonderful play that offers a glimpse into a world we don’t get to see very often, through the eyes of Annette, someone who is a lot more similar to those of us living in New York City than we may realize.

Click HERE for tickets.

Review by Naranjani Reddi.

Escaping Dreamland