Victor Talmadge and Dan Cantor Photo by David Allen

The play recreates the interactions between Larry Sultan (Dan Cantor), an acclaimed photographer and teacher of photography at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and his parents, Irving (Victor Talmadge) and Jean (Susan Koozin), as Larry documents their life through images of the couple at their home in the San Fernando valley.

Larry's parents are the kind of middle-class Jewish couple that have been fodder for much drama (and comedy)–sniping at each other (and Larry) yet still emanating a level of commitment for each other that belies the stresses of decades of marriage. After World War II, when Irving was dissatisfied with his life selling men's clothing in Brooklyn, he decamped to Southern California where the only job he could manage to find was once again selling men's clothes, but in a retail English menswear shop that required him to assume a false name to disguise his Jewishness. (Irving later became a salesman for Schick razors, traveling a 500-mile wide territory three weeks out of four.)

But the action doesn't concern Irving's job, or his mother's life as a real estate agent. The play mostly covers Larry's weekend visits ("Almost every weekend!" his father shouts) to work on his project of examining his parents' lives through images of them at home. "Larry is a very important photographer," his mother says in one of her asides. "Whatever that means." Mom is the epitome of a post-war bride, projecting a traditional housewife image while simultaneously keeping the family afloat after Irving loses his job in his 50s.

If this all sounds dull, it's rather miraculous that it manages not to be. As we watch as Irving and Larry come into conflict over and over–"It's like he's been investigating us!" his father complains–we are treated to images from Sultan's actual book (available on Amazon) and snippets of some of the hundreds of reels of Super 8 film Larry recovered from a dust and mouse dung-covered box in the attic that reveal elements of life in Southern California that are stunning in their ordinariness: a boy playing in the ocean, mom staring blankly at the camera in the garage as she heads off to show a house, dad practicing his golf swing in the heavily wallpapered master bedroom.

In addition to this imagery (projected on a screen hung upstage center, high above the action), what makes Pictures From Home most compelling are the bravura performances of Victor Talmadge and Susan Koozin. As Irving, Talmadge perfectly embodies that stage in a man's life when the regrets over what he has failed to accomplish are papered over by his actual successes. Irving ended his career as a vice president of sales, but his edgy anger at all the ways life has disappointed him come pouring out as he shouts at Larry about any number of things, all the while denying that he's angry. "Really?," Larry asks. "You express conflict all the time." With his lean frame, Talmadge even looks a bit like Larry's actual father, and set designer Kate Noll and costume designer Meg Neville have done marvelous work matching the design of the Sultans' home and the clothes they wore, both as seen in Larry's book.

Susan Koozin is magnificent as Jean. She allows her character to sink into the background as the real Jean might have done in order to maintain her husband's image as the master of the house. "Pretending he's the boss is getting harder and harder," she says late in the play. Yet her presence is undeniable and powerful. There are moments when the pain etched on her face feels so incredibly authentic that you want to scream out that she needs to stand up for herself, to own her place as the true heart of the family.

Dan Cantor also does excellent work here, but his character is so overshadowed by the two powerhouses of Talmadge and Koozin that Larry seems to fade into the background–which I imagine might have been playwright Sharr White's intention: the observer, Larry, is there merely to frame the action of his parents' lives.

In a taut one hour and 45 minutes (no intermission), White and Moscone manage to capture three lives full of dreams both fulfilled and unfulfilled. There are hard truths exposed here, and we are better for hearing them.

Pictures From Home runs through May 27, 2026, at Marin Theatre, 397 Miller Avenue, Mill Valley CA. Performances are Wednesdays-Saturdays at 7:30pm, with matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00pm. Tickets range from $38-$94 (plus a $6 handling fee per total order). For tickets and information, please visit marintheatre.org or call the box office at 415-388-5208.