EVERYBODY'S GOT ONE  

by TRAVIS MICHAEL HOLDER 

"Critics watch a battle from a high place then come down to shoot the survivors."   ~ Ernest Hemingway    

Photo by Jeff Lorch 

THROUGH MAR. 1: Rogue Machine at the Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Av., LA. 855.585.5185 or roguemachinetheatre.net 

Photo by Guy Manly 

THROUGH FEB. 28: Open Fist at the Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Av., LA. 323.882.6912 or www.openfist.org

Photo by Ken Sawyer 

Road Theatre Company

During the performance of the world premiere of Robert Axelrod’s intensely moving new play Lifeline at the Road, a series of factoids are flashed on the back wall of Desma Murphy’s incredibly contextural in-the-round set. One reads: “Since 2022, nearly 1.3 million LGBTQ+ young people have reached out through dedicated crisis support asking to be heard.”

Indeed, Lifeline takes place in the multi-purpose room of one such center as a group of four volunteers begin training to provide a voice willing to listen for one of our troubled society’s most vulnerable and at-risk members: queer teens and young adults who find themselves at the crossroads of whether they want to live or die.

These sessions are being conducted by two of the facility’s counselors, a clearly nervous relative newbie named Jen (Brittany Taylor Visser), who is obviously for some reason apprehensive about being on this side of the game, and her super-cheery supervisor Drew (Tommy Dickey), a confident veteran of such procedures.

As much as these colleagues do their best to work together and support one another on their potentially fragile quest to get their charges up to speed and ready to hit the phone banks, along the way their relationship begins to unravel. It seems Jen has just returned from a personal hiatus after facing a crisis of her own with a caller and the gay white privileged Drew wonders if she’s ready to resume this responsibility. 

When she gently but firmly calls him out as possibly himself being someone not quite as able to identify with young people in need as he proudly claims to be, there’s a moment of tension between them they resolutely but uncomfortably strive to resolve.

Aside from their own shaky footing, we get to know each of the four trainees along the way, as well as a young gender-fluid homeless guitar player (Joh Chase, alternating with Lou Roy in the role not in Axelrod’s original script) who for the present calls the floor of the center their home and contributes to the proceedings by adding musical interludes to identify passages of time between the coaching sessions.

The trainees could not be more diverse. There’s Kai (Clifford J. Adams), a rather flamboyant club kid who seems able to breeze through the classes with a snap of the fingers and penchant for breaking into his titillating dance moves; Sarah Beth (Naomi Rubin), a disruptive and angry neurodivergent loner who can’t seem to keep from adding her opinion no matter how inappropriate; and Maya (Xoe Sazzle), a trans woman who's the best of the group at understanding what’s needed of her—and will probably make the best counselor of the bunch.

The fourth volunteer is an older suburban housewife named Patti (Amy Tolsky), who though well-meaning is somewhat of a visitor from another planet who might not ever comprehend the others’ more contemporary lingo and sensibilities or have the ability to get comfortable in these surroundings.

Getting to know and understand these eclectic characters and become privy to each of their individual stories is a lot to unpack here in the play’s 100-minute running time, but with the help of Axelrod’s highly accessible dialogue and this knockout ensemble of incredibly gifted actors, the inherent clumsiness and predictability of the storyline is quickly and expertly overcome.

The real glue that holds all the elements together here, however, is the sensationally malleable staging of award-winning director Ken Sawyer, who with this production makes his long overdue return to the Road, the company that first emboldened and honed his talents many years ago.

It was Sawyer’s idea to reconfigure the theatre’s proscenium stage into a four-sided arena playing space for this production, a conceit that brings the audience into the mix as the counselors and trainees acknowledge our presence during Lifeline’s training sessions as though we are guests invited to observe the process.

It was also Sawyer’s idea to add both the musical breaks and the projections of not only staggering real life statistics about the rampant numbers of queer youth contemplating suicide, but also images of the counselors as they grew up and how those sweet-faced kids became young adults who have probably seen more of our fuckedup world than anyone should ever have to endure.

The cast is uniformly excellent and the camaraderie between this intrepid band of players is something quite palpable—again, I suspect, thanks to the patient and beneficent leadership of Sawyer.

Adams is especially winsome as the continuously lighthearted Kai and Sazzle is a major standout as Maya, someone who has been through a lifetime of pain and social isolation but is still nowhere near giving up the strength to make things more equitable for our country’s legions of displaced young people.

Still, the heart and soul of this ensemble comes from the remarkable Tolsky, who delivers to us a breakable, discombobulated sweetheart achingly wanting to do her best, an uncannily relatable everyman we’re all left wanting to give a hug. Yet, although much of the play’s sly humor comes from her character, when the personal reason Patti wants so desperately to succeed at helping troubled youth is revealed, Tolsky succeeds bigtime in breaking our hearts—and sending at least one patron (ahem) out of the theatre totally unable to speak.

Axelrod, himself a volunteer with the Trevor Project, our nation’s leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention service for LGBTQ youth, has created a timely, urgently important work, a breath of compassionate fresh air as so much of our lives today seems tainted by racism and greed and people out to destroy everything the good people of our country hold dear.

“In the time you have been watching this play,” a final projection tells us, “1,060 calls have been made to the National 988 Suicide Hotline. We would like to dedicate this performance to those who were there to listen.”

Thanks for the cleansing generated here by each and every one of the committed artists who collaborated to bring Lifeline to the venerable Road Theatre stage; we all need it bigtime right now.

THROUGH MAR. 1: Road Theatre Company, 10747 Magnolia Blvd., NoHo. 818.761.8838 or RoadTheatre.org

Photo by Steven Simone-Friedland

Zephyr Theatre

When asked once if she had any regrets, Tallulah Bankhead quipped, “If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.”

As someone who eagerly admits to being a true Tennessee Williams-o-phile, I was both excited and apprehensive to attend Rick and Steven Simone-Friedland’s new solo “Memory Play” Kind Stranger, culled word-for-word from Tenn’s proudly and humorously regret-filled Memoirs.

And I left still excited… yet somewhat disappointed.

It’s a great thrill to hear the last century’s most prolific storyteller’s words delivered again from his colorful 1975 autobiography, something anyone who adores the majorly flawed genius loves and, although it's a generally accurate work but long acknowledged to be about 30% fiction, has probably read and reread many times.

This adaptation is an impressive achievement in so many ways and Steven Simone-Friedland, who also directs, is to be commended for pulling together some of the often meandering tome’s most interesting, edifying, and salaciously juiciest passages. 

As Tennessee, Rick Simone-Friedland is warm and congenial, taking in his audience as though we’re all old friends sitting around the cluttered workshop in his Key West home listening to him wax nostalgic about his life, his loves, and yes, his many regrets.

That congeniality is part of the problem. As noteworthy as it is that Simone-Friedland had so accurately committed Tenn’s so flowery and clever anecdotes word-for-word in his marathon performance, it’s rather surprising he appears to have never studied the many interviews and documentary footage available to capture the man more accurately.

Tenn was never what one would call congenial; he was loud and rude and when he spoke to someone, it was more as though he was entertaining himself with his charm and intelligence and signature way of turning conversations into poetry than he ever was truly sharing with anyone listening to him go on… and on. He was a living one-man show and always performing, never interacting.

Simone-Friedland has a wonderfully unique vocal quality that could be such an asset to bringing the persona of the 20^th-century’s greatest dramatist to life, but he misses the raspy, sazerac-soaked, world-weary quality that Tenn developed through years of abuse, while his southern accent, although adequate, is devoid of the man’s deeply rich Mississippi drawl and the sing-song rhythms of his speech. And unlike Tennessee, since during the 75-minute running time of Kind Stranger he gets steadily drunker and drunker, his speech never begins to slur or become louder, more shrill, or characteristically sloppier. 

There are also no pauses to search for just the right words, something Tenn did with such frequency that listening to him talk—or more accurately pontificate—could often be a frustrating vigil.

Now, I say all this not to be an old curmudgeonly bitter critic but because I knew Tenn well (and through that way too brief period as a pretty young thing honed my skills at running from the non-stop lecherous advances of someone I idolized) and I have taught classes and lectured on the life and works of this brilliant and impossible man for the last two decades. I have also played many of his quirkiest characters through the years, including Quintin in his Small Craft Warnings, a role clearly autobiographical, and portrayed the man himself both in LA and for the opening night of New Orleans' annual Tennessee Williams Literary Festival in Lament for the Moths, an original play based on his incredibly overlooked poetry.

I hope my observations about the Simone-Friedlands’ most welcome first pass of Kind Stranger will be taken as a tool to perhaps make their formidable creative effort grow and become even more polished. All the pieces are here and all the talent to make it happen is quite evident. Now what’s needed is for it to be further explored, enriched, and for all the lyrical pieces to settle nicely into their proper places in a most fascinating puzzle.

THROUGH FEB. 8: Zephyr Theatre, 7456 Melrose Ave., WeHo. Tickets: theatreplanners.stagey.net/projects/13051?tab=tickets.

Photo by Amanda Searle 

Montalban Theatre

When the incomparable Suzy Eddie Izzard first without fanfare or spotlight strolled onto the stage of the Montalban on her opening night, suddenly those gathered realized it was the quirky star of this one-person interpretation of Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet—and the applause and cheers were instantly deafening.

Izzard, her gaze falling above and isolated from the audience, simply lifted both hands in an effort to quell the enthusiastic reception. When the rapture continued, she raised her hands even higher and with more defiance, the look on her face clearly expressing something akin to annoyance.

When she finally had our full attention, only then did Izzard include us in after all, explaining that her intention here is to strip away the highbrow classic grandeur of how Hamlet is most often presented in an effort to return it to the way it must have been in the beginning back in 1599, with those gathered crowded up against the Globe Theatre's rustic playing space, thus attempting to offer an experience with much more intimacy than usually shared from a traditional proscenium stage.

She also made a point of telling us, despite her four-decade career as a comedienne and stand-up comic, this performance is meant to be a serious endeavor stripped of her signature humor. “After all,” she further explained, “this is The Tragedy of Hamlet and is about the destruction of a family." Despite these admonitions, there are many moments in Izzard’s Hamlet that do elicit laughs, something, if I’m a decent reader of quite subtle human nature even in the middle of a performance, I don’t think made the star of the show very happy.

But it’s Suzy Eddie Izzard and, although this turn naturally manifests all the previously seen nuances of her incredible, albeit off-center talent, her expressive face, made up with bright red lipstick and Jo Anne Worley eyelashes to appear unapologetically womanly despite the many characters portrayed here, has a kind of Lucille Ball flexibility that instantly at times belies taking the show altogether seriously.

Still, Izzard is mesmerizing and totally sensational as she takes on every character in one of the Bard’s most famous tales, from the title character to his mother Gertrude to every messenger and courtier to the gravediggers to the players’ page Young Pip—why even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are here, depicted as Izzard’s puppet-like flapping hands.

The accessibility of her performance is unquestionably on display in her jarringly unique delivery of the Prince’s most well-known speech, the character’s often caricatured third soliloquy, presented simply and with great warmth and humanity instead of spouted in grandly theatrical style filled with rage, anger, and manafactured existential angst.

There is no huge effort made to differentiate each character more than to peripherally change voices or from physically turning one way or the other, yet oddly it works beautifully. The playing style is devoid of the usual heavy emotional ride and surprisingly, this leaves even more room for us to hear and understand Shakespeare’s speeches without any exaggeration of the beloved poetry that has made these plays so recognizable all these centuries later.

This truly one-of-a-kind bare stage mounting of Hamlet, sans props and costuming and swordplay, pared down to two hours in an adaption by the star’s brother Mark Izzard and sparingly directed by Selina Cadell, is not for anyone unfamiliar with the story—although I’d eagerly bring any or all of my students to see it as long as I was sure they were already well acquainted with the original—but for me it was an experience that could not have been more electrically exciting or dead-on inspiring.

Suzy Eddie Izzard is a performer for the ages and if her inventive, spellbinding, almost hypnotic retelling of The Tragedy of Hamlet doesn’t prove that the theatrical world is in danger of becoming as braindead as the rest of our disintegrating society at this place in time, I’d be highly disappointed.

THROUGH JAN. 31: Montalban Theatre, 1615 Vine St., Hollywood. www.ticketmaster.com

Photo by Jeff Lorch

Skylight Theatre

The brand new and welcomingly irreverent musical Kid Gloves, with book and lyrics by Matthew Leavitt with music by Nathan Wang, is making its world premiere at the Skylight and there sure is a lot of fun to be had here. That said, although the future of Kid Gloves is hopefully as bright and sunny as Mark Mendelson’s set, the promising production still has a ways to go to polish it all up to a gleaming shine.

The concept is clever and Leavitt’s book and lyrics are snappy and delightfully quick-witted. From the first song, with the perfectly cast Will Collyer as an ex-Mouseketeer reduced to hosting a cheesy reality competition show airing on an obscure streaming network called  KIDZ+, I was absolutely onboard.

Leavitt’s opening ballad “Kids Are the Future” was my favorite number in Kid Gloves, with these delightfully tongue-in-cheek lyrics to portend what’s in store here:

“Kids are the future / They’re pure and brand new

They’re small in stature / But they matter more than you.

Their skin is free of wrinkles / Their hair is free of grays

Their eyes still have a twinkle / And there’s wonder in their gaze.

Time will soon erase us / And they’ll all replace us / And your role will be recast

‘Cause kids are the future / And we’re the past.

Yes, kids are the future / They’re you, but improved

‘Cause anything newer / Is always better than used.”

Other song titles include “Let’s All Live in a Bubble,” “Quinoa and Kale,” “Let’s Everyone Recycle,” “Hey! Be Polite!” and “Edmund the Elephant’s Theme.” It’s all quite fresh and unexpected. Unfortunately, Wang’s musical contribution does not offer the same sparkle and potential; there aren’t any catchy melodies to hum on the way out of the theatre and the score does not in any way match the potential of Leavitt’s originality, nor the talents of musical director/keyboardist Anthony Lucca and his spirited band of musicians.

Kid Gloves is the title of the aforementioned reality show where four acts compete for the honor of hosting their own children’s program on the same network, all judged by a trio (or quartet, depending on if you count puppets) of clearly hasbeen former Nickleodeon-style personalities.

Still, as we all hear about all those real reality shows bombarding our streaming services, behind the scenes is not all fun and games and lollipops. The competition gets brutal as the sickly sweet contestants begin to unravel and sabotage one another with a glee that could only rival the vitriol of our current man-baby resident of the White House.

The cast features some of LA’s best musical theatre talent (of course it is, since they were all cast by Michael Donavan) and, with only one glaring exception, the performances are all worldclass wonderful.

The pint-sized but huge-voiced Natalie Lander is a scene-stealer here as the Baby June-esque contestant Darla Darling, while the deadpanning Suzy Nakamura as the caustically opinionated judge Penelope (manipulating her far more cheery hand-operated bunny companion Bonita) provides the perfect juxtaposition to Lander’s gooey good girl who can swear like a longshoreman when off-camera.

Jonathan Slavin and Harry Murphy are hilarious as Nakamura’s fellow judges Edmund the Elephant and Professor Penguinpants, although Salvin could back off a tad in his constant focus-pulling reactions to the constantly frantic goings-on.

Adam J. Smith and Heather Marie Marsden are both great as the older and world-weary married entertainers Eddie and Meredith. The couple’s raucously inappropriate double entendre-ridden “The Most Fun You Can Have,” extolling the joys of playing with “Balls! Balls! Balls!,” proves to be the highlight of the evening, while later Marsden aces Leavitt’s cynical and bittersweet eleventh-hour ballad “It’s Simple.”

Chris Kerrigan kills it as the looming and not at all kid-friendly bipolar Juaquin, who becomes even scarier when another contestant swipes his ADHD meds, while Lauren Lorati is a charmer as the naïve and put-upon girlfriend of the annoyingly woke Jackson, who as played by Joey Richter takes the concept of being annoying a bit farther than necessary.

All these ridiculously eclectic characters add to the fun as they are introduced and each is gifted with his or her moment to shine—however, perhaps if performers are given one solo in the spotlight instead of multiple numbers, Kid Gloves would be...well, lke OJ's, a better fit.

Although director Richard Israel’s staging is fast-paced and kinetic, his efforts are thwarted bigtime by the show’s length. The program tell us the show runs an intermissionless 100 minutes, yet opening weekend the actual running time clocked in at one hour and 50 minutes. By the time it ended with the otherwise infectious grand finale “Playdate at the Playground,” I was frankly more than ready to pack up my own balls! balls! balls! and stop playing.

Also dragging the show down is Mendelson’s otherwise flashy and colorful set, which morphs way too often into the studio’s backstage area complete with a craft table full of snacks. Since Leavitt’s script brings multiple and frequent filmic cuts from the major soundstage set (with us doubling as the studio audience) to behind the scenes, the constant switch from one place to the other, elaborately performed in blue light by the actors trying hard not to bump into one another, gets highly monotonous.

With the unique width of the Skylight stage, why half of the space couldn’t have housed the soundstage and the other the backstage area is a real puzzlement—and would have saved all of us fidgety studio audience members about 15 minutes of our valuable time.

If Kid Gloves could be judiciously and ruthlessly pruned of about 30 minutes of the more repetitious songs and equally overstated situations, it could be something even more special with a guaranteed future. I hope the gifted creators might rethink the project, Wang could goose up his lackluster score, and the team could be brutal in their quest to lose some excess.

I truly believe with a little reexamination, Kid Gloves could be a major hit to rival The 25th Annual Putman County Spelling Bee or Anenue Q in skewering entertainment meant for all of those pushy little “Kids of the Future” now preparing to replace us flawed predecessors.

THROUGH FEB. 15: Skylight Theatre, 1816½ N. Vermont Av., LA. TICKETS @ kidgloves.ludus.com

Photo by Roger Mastroianni 

Pantages Theatre and Segerstrom Center for the Arts

It’s genuinely surprising, for an old curmudgeon who has always run from both romantic chick-flicks and sappy cashcow A’Murken musical theatre, that I was quite taken by The Notebook, now playing at the Pantages and moving on to the Segerstrom in Costa Mesa at the end of the month.

I’ve never seen the film adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ best-selling 1996 novel starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams; just reading about the premise, I never even thought of sitting through it. The story of an enduring love between two people that lasts a lifetime and survives one of life's most devastating challenges—the onset of Alzheimer’s disease by one of the lovers—would not usually be something I’d put myself through without anesthesia.

As the aging Noah (Beau Gravitte) tries to break through the dark clouds of confusion and fear his beloved wife Allie (Sharon Catherine Brown) has been suffering for many years, he patiently and relentlessly stays by her side despite the fact he's basically a stranger in her disintegrating world. “The paint is chipping,” he wryly observes, “but the foundation is still all right.”

He reads to her from his diary chronicling the considerable trials and triumphs of their relationship through several decades in hopes something will spark a memory of the remarkable lifelong bond they shared.

The tale is told by three sets of actors playing the couple, with Kyle Mangold and Chloe Cheers appearing as the lovers as mismatched teens who can’t keep their hands off one another while Ken Wulf Clark and Alysha Deslorieux play Noah and Allie rediscovering each other after a decades-long separation.

The main thing that drew me to The Notebook against my better judgment was the team responsible for turning the story into a stage adaptation. I assumed from my respect for the creators, what bookwriter Bekah Brunstetter and directors Michael Greif and Schele Williams contributed to the project must have made it purdy monumental.

Tears can be a good cleansing thing at times it’s said and if so, my reaction would be just about classic. Granted, the story of Noah and Allie hit me perhaps harder than it might others, having personally spent many years dealing with the often unspeakable trauma of being caregiver for and watching over someone I’ve loved for 56 years as he slowly and heartbreakingly disappears before my eyes.

At times, all three couples appear onstage at the same time, physically weaving through one another’s worlds with almost balletic grace. The staging is truly remarkable and brilliantly theatrical, perfectly complimented by a mesmerizingly committed cast who collectively rise above any possible clumsiness pulling off the magic of reshaping the tale from cinematically straightforward to daringly non-linear.

Gravitte, former artistic director of the Actors Studio in New York, is outstanding as the tortured older Noah, beautifully complimented by Brown, together subtly finding the soul of the star-crossed lovers that’s the heart of this production.

As the middle Noah and Allie, the confusing and complicated love between them is perfectly assayed by Clark and Deslorieux. Their duets are the most striking in the production and her solos, particularly her final turn in “My Days,” is the showstopper of the evening.

All of this is achieved and held together by one indelible factor: Broadway newcomer Ingrid Michaelson’s gossamer, haunting score absolutely stuns in its tenderness and striking euphonious quality, with whip-smart and poignant lyrics that beautifully compliment the lovers' journey.

“Time moves so fast,” Noah discerns, “when you’re with the one person who understands you.” Perhaps that was the reason, as I sat in the darkened Pantages holding the hand of that one person in my own life, it hit me so hard and, in spite of my initial reluctance to go where it quickly took me, made the production such a striking and unexpectedly emotional experience for me—or maybe instead it’s just part of the evolution of contemporary musical theatre at its best.

There’s no tap dancing, no crashing chandeliers or other flashy special effects, no Merman-style belt numbers in The Notebook; it’s just a quiet and immensely relatable story celebrating the wondrous endurance of true love and its ability to move mountains in its uniqueness and its simplicity.

CLOSED: Pantages Theatre

THROUGH FEB. 7: Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Dr., Costa Mesa. 714.556.2787 or scfta.org

El Portal Theatre

Longtime Los Angeles weatherman Fritz Coleman retired in 2020 after four decades delivering his signature uncannily cheery forecasts on a daily basis but at age 76, his solo show Unassisted Residency, which plays once monthly at the El Portal’s intimate Monroe Forum, proves he’s still got the chops to deliver a jocular and lighthearted tsunami to his eager and most loyal fans.

Coleman began his career coming to LA to pursue his passion for standup comedy in the early 80s after first achieving success as a well-loved deejay radio personality in Buffalo, New York.

As the story goes, a producer at NBC caught his act one night at a local club and began to woo him to become a weatherman at KNBC-TV since our weather here was so consistent that he felt it needed a little on-air boost of humor to make it more interesting.

Delivering the daily forecast with a twinkle in his eye beginning in 1984 didn’t stop Coleman from continuing to chase his original dream by performing on local stages in several successful live shows, including his hilarious award-winning turn in The Reception: It’s Me, Dad! which played around town for several years to sold out houses.

Now, after leaving NBC four years ago, Coleman is back but the demographics have changed—or I might politely say… matured.

In my own case, as someone a year older than Coleman, his focus on finding the humor in aging is most welcome. In Unassisted Residency, the comedian talks about the challenges life has to offer in these, our so-called golden years, from physical deterioration to losing contemporaries on a regular basis to navigating the brave new world of technology and social media.

As his opening warmup act, the very funny and professionally self-deprecating Wendy Liebman notes, while looking out at the sea of gray hair and Hawaiian camp shirts in their audience, that Coleman chose to present his show as Sunday matinees so his target audience can shuffle our drooping derrières on home before dark.

Along the way, he also tackles subjects such as retirement communities, nonstop doctors’ appointments, incontinence, and Viagra, not to mention having grown up sucking in our parents’ omnipresent clouds of secondhand tobacco smoke and that generation’s lackadaisical attitude toward our safety and our health, all before moving on discuss to his all-new admiration for those heroic modern educators who during the pandemic had the patience to deal with zoom-teaching his grandkids.

The one thing he doesn’t talk much about is the weather—that is beyond mentioning how grateful he is that our current heat wave didn’t deter those gathered from venturing out of our caves and offering as a throwaway that one of the reasons he retired four years ago was climate change. Although he never says it, he doesn’t really have to; we get that even for someone as funny as Coleman, everyone has their limits when it comes to the potentially catastrophic future for our poor misused and abused planet.

Then when he launches into reminiscing about the amazingly incessant search for sexual gratification in our younger years (that time Stephen King once wrote when the males of the species all look at life through a spermy haze) and how that has changed since then. As a now single guy still looking for love—with some choice remarks about online dating sites—he tells a rather steamy tale about one date that proves it ain’t over ‘til it’s over, something of which I can definitely relate.

I first met Coleman in 1988 or 1989 when I did a feature interview with him as a cover story for The Tolucan (the more industry-oriented and less Evening Women’s Club-ish-pandering predecessor of the Tolucan Times).

He was gracious and charming and kept me laughing so hard back then that I couldn’t take notes fast enough, a knack he not only hasn’t lost but has sharpened considerably over the past 40 years. I couldn’t help wondering how many of the audience members at the Forum have been following him since then and for whom the topic of not-so gently aging hits home as dead-center as it did me.

This doesn’t mean you have to be 70-something to appreciate Fritz Coleman’s hilarious gift for creating homespun storytelling in his ever-extending monthly outing called Unassisted Residency.

My partner Hugh, who is a mere 42 years my junior and was quite literally at least three decades younger than anyone else in the audience last Sunday, laughed longer and louder than anyone else in the audience—perhaps a reaction to hearing me bitch continuously about getting old for the last 12 years?

NOW IN ITS THIRD YEAR! Plays one Sunday each month at the El Portal Theatre’s Monroe Forum Theatre, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., NoHo.  For schedule: www.elportaltheatre.com/fritzcoleman.html