by D. Jette

Frank South, the writer-star-subject of Pay Attention: ADHD in Hollywood: On the Rocks with a Twist, is a troubled man working hard to resolve himself.  Diagnosed with Attention Defecit Hyperactivity Disorder at the age of 49, and eight-years removed from a nagging alcoholism that was a poor regulator for his disability, he is an exaggerated example of how the entertainment business can enrich, destroy and redeem a person all in the course of a lifetime.

South is not a typical poster-boy for the disorders he now embraces.  He is not a small man, and his craggy face, bushy eyebrows and commanding voice seem more characteristic of a steady-willed father figure than the lost and vulnerable character he portrays.  He is on his second marriage, a veteran of television production turned Hawaiian transplant and self-produced solo performer – hardly the distracted, learning-impaired teenage profile that often accompanies his diagnosis.

Despite his energy and personal connection to the material, Frank is not a great artist or a refined performer.  He confesses many times throughout the course of Pay Attention that he made his fortune selling hollow, soapy dreck to fickle daytime audiences.  His longest tenure was running Melrose Place for Aaron Spelling in the mid-nineties, a stint which ended in his dubious dismissal as a scapegoat for a lawsuit between Spelling and actress Hunter Tylo.  South does a fun impression of the now late Spelling and has plenty to say about the television tycoon, “Aaron Spelling doesn’t even pretend to have your back when the going gets rough,” but also that, “I can’t get mad at him.  He’s just another ghost looking for that fancy ride to get us home safe.”

This latest work is many more fathoms deep than your average episode of the Place, but like a surgeon who’s been out of the game too long, his nervous strokes are often superficial.  Within his confessions of drunken driving and rage bordering on spousal abuse he seems to absolve himself of responsibility, blaming instead the ‘crazy’ he has buried under his shed.  He even begins the piece by saying ‘You can’t control the events that make you,’ an opening surrender to his condition and a disregard for personal choice in the face of adversity.  Maybe he’s past apology, choosing instead to tell the story without guilt, but many of the sentiments ring false, particularly when he glosses over the gin and focuses intead on his untreated mental disorders.

South began his long career with a pair of one-act plays which caught the eye of directing legend Robert Altman.  The story of his young mentorship with Altman is a central story of Pay Attention – South describes how as a young writer, Altman took him into his family, staged and produced his plays, and commissioned from him new works for cinema and television.  In anecdotes that would make any aspiring writer envious, he recalls a storybook tale of true Hollywood ‘discovery’ and his subsequent decent into self-importance.  He avoids the details of his split with Altman and his return to the relative poverty of waiting tables, a detour that exemplifies this piece’s tendency to make light of South’s sins and plaster over some of the more painful aspects of his recovery.

After a performance of his show, currently running on the second stage at the Santa Monica Playhouse, I asked him what drove him to write a biographical play and perform it himself.  ‘I resisted it at first,’ he told me with the same nervous yet surprisingly direct energy he’d just spent two hours throwing around an empty stage, ‘but Margaret pushed me.’

Frank’s wife Margaret South, a Hollywood veteran in her own right, is the producer of the show and is possibly the primary impetus behind Mr. South’s self-examination.  The couple live in Hawaii where they have co-created a program called Kids Talk Story, a cirrculum for at-risk youths that helps them unwind and heal the complex emotions that often complicate a troubled child’s behavior and self esteem.  I asked South if he sees a connection between the catharsis he offers his students and what he gets from doing shows like this one.  “Absolutely,” he said, remembering a matinee he gave for the kids that included portions of Pay Attention, “It was one of the scariest times I’ve ever been on stage.”

South also pays tribute to director Mark Travis for encouraging him to air out his personal issues via solo performance.  Mark Travis has been credited with helping to shape the solo-performance genre, garnering acclaim as a director for other one-man autobiographical pieces like Chazz Palminteri’s A Bronx Tale.  South recounted attending Travis’ workshop, and that the director and his wife helped him slowly open up to writing about himself and his struggle with ADHD and alcohol.

It’s hard to tell if Mr. South regards this play as an exercise in self help or if he truly sees it as a chance to entertain others and shine light on his various co-morbid conditions.  That the show has crossed the Pacific to open in Santa Monica is evidence that he and his producers feel the show has legs beyond just gathering awareness for attention deficit disorders.  Performance is an effective tool for healing, and while this show is honest and includes the witty self-deprication that is often the engine of this kind of work, South’s muddy performance is hard to parse.  At 130 minutes with no intermission it is an ordeal, and I suspect that there are times when South succumbs to his ADHD, loses focus, and repeats sections of the script.  Perhaps it is all intentional.  But regardless of the success of this play, Frank South makes himself an example of an imperfect life come full circle, a man of drive and unsteady fortune who is now proudly a member of his distracted demographic that’s “not looking out the window, we’re looking at the light coming in.”

Pay Attention: ADHD in Hollywood: On the Rocks with a Twist is written and performed by Frank South.  It is directed by Mark Travis who also developed the work with Margaret South.  Lighting Design is by Kathi O’Donohue.

Pay Attention is performed Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 6 pm through June 7, 2009

The Other Space in the Santa Monica Playhouse is located at 1211 4th St, Santa Monica, CA 90401, just south of Wilshire Blvd.

Ticket prices: $25.00

Reservations online at www.plays411.com/payattention or by phone at (323) 960-7738.