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 Kelly Stuart

Playwrights' Arena at the Los Angeles LGBT Center

There are very few times over the last half-century I haven't been grateful to be part of the ambitious and scrappy Los Angeles theatre community where nonstop hard work and a fierce devotion to breaking rules keep our many large and tiny stages delivering wondrous things an astonishing number of weeks in the year. Since the pandemic, attendance at Southland stages has not rushed back, making it even more difficult for our stalwart theatre companies to keep producing.

One of the most prolific and groundbreaking companies in our town is Jon Lawrence Rivera’s Playwrights’ Arena, which for 33 years has brought unforgettable new works to our local stages, not only in traditional settings around the city but performed in outdoor areas in front of converted warehouse stages, in an underground parking lot, and now, with Swipe, their latest startlingly bold and haunting production, in a reconstructed art gallery within the Los Angeles LBGT Center in Hollywood.

Swipe follows a single older gay man as he arrives home to his cramped studio apartment and spends the evening by himself desperately trying to navigate technology and fighting off the demons of loneliness and despair as an outcast in our basically youth-based society. As he makes his frugal dinner, emptying cans from Walmart while watching Little House on the Prairie on cable, his frustrations begin to intensify, eventually leading him to start swiping through dating site photos on his iPhone looking for a quick hook-up to assuage his overpowering anxiety and sense of emptiness.

Conceived and developed by its director Rivera (recipient of my annual TicketHolder Award for Direction last year in a tie with himself), the role is played by a single actor, although during the run four gifted high-profile LA artists will alternate, making it even more an incredibly unique experience. Adding to this uniqueness is the fact that there’s no dialogue whatsoever; it’s a strictly nonverbal performance. The character goes about his evening with the audience scattered around on all sides within what Rivera and his designers brilliantly created and simply call “Apartment 4.”

The concept was loosely based on German playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz’ 1971 counter-culture play Request Concert, but for me it also invoked an exercise developed by the lategreat Uta Hagan, something I use frequently in the first sessions of my acting classes. The concept is to completely improvise doing all the remote-control activities you would do when you first wake up, including brushing your teeth, smoothing the bedsheets, finding your slippers, petting the dog, whatever is part of your usual routine. It’s an amazing way of opening up a young actor to being in the moment.

For the audience of Swipe, however, although it could rapidly descend into an early Warholian exercise in the boredom of everyday life, luckily the actor I saw portraying the character was a true local treasure, actor-playwright Nick Salamone (above left), one of the most arresting and giving performers I have ever known and appeared opposite. Over the years, Nick has played Ui to my Givola in Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui for Classical Theatre Lab and Ricky Roma to my Shelley Levene in that Mamet-hole’s Glengarry Glen Ross.

Salamone is heartbreaking here as he thrashes his OCD-hampered way through Apartment 4 like a hungry panther looking for something besides concrete and bars to make his life complete. He makes a sandwich and heats up a bowl of soup in the completely functional kitchen corner of Leah Ramillano’s simple yet affective set, never missing a chance to find each quirky nuance that could identify the guy as easily as a fingerprint. Salamone nudges aside the tiny struggling succulent in the center of his small round dining room table to make room for his meager dinner and to add a small candle, but the minute he finishes eating, he wipes down the table, blows out the candle, and the plant is returned dead center to its original position—something that instantly makes the space his own.

I would love to return and see the other three actors, Ralph Cole Jr., Dan Guerrero, and Reggie Lee, following the same general track. I’m sure all three veteran performers bring something to the role individual to them not only emotionally but, according to Rivera, each actor provides his own music to listen to, his own choice of TV show to turn on, his own bedclothes and trickwear to change into. Salamone opens his own mail upon arriving home and, finding a child's drawing among the bills, he attaches it to the refrigerator door with a convenient magnet.

I’m grateful I had the opportunity to see this guy in the role. Salamone’s intensity and Beckettian timing are fascinating to be behold and we are easily drawn into the man’s anguish as we watch him carefully fold and unfold his clothing, replace that hopeless plant, and retrieve condoms from below the socks in his dresser drawer to make them more convenient after someone online has obviously agreed to stop by for a little anonymous rendezvous.

This is certainly a kind of risky and defiant theatre we usually don't see presented and it’s breathtaking how much we can learn from the experience and how this one man’s grief affects us personally. I for one always feel somewhat naïve about how a person goes through life alone. Although I have many friends who prefer to be single, I have literally never been alone myself. Since coming of age many decades ago when the dinosaurs still roamed the streets, the trajectory of my relationships has gone from girlfriend to boyfriend to another boyfriend to my baby mamma to another boyfriend to my wife to the partner for whom I am still a caregiver to a girl with benefits to a guy with benefits and finally, to the love of my life.

I’ve often wondered if being alone could at least occasionally be as empty and traumatic as it is for this character yet I can also say, as someone who has never been without a partner in crime and in life, that sometimes even for two people who are together there can be a collective loneliness that can fall upon each of us like an enveloping shroud.

I was extremely moved and totally mesmerized by Jon Rivera‘s remarkable Swipe which, especially when partnered with his fearless longtime collaborator Nick Salamone, became so real over the course of the 80-minute running time that at one point, as the character took to his bed to try to quiet his yammy-yammies, I had an impulse to call out, “Alexa, play waves in sleep sounds.” That always works for me.

THROUGH APR. 21: Playwrights’ Arena at the Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner Cultural Arts Center’s Advocate and Gochis Galleries, LA LGBT Center, 1125 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood. www.playwrightsarena.org or lalgbtcenter.org/events

Photo by Cooper Bates

Echo Theater Company at the Atwater Village Theatre

Upcoming British playwright and screenwriter Stephen Laughton is certainly a major talent to be watched. His award-winning play One Jewish Boy, now being introduced to the west coast by ever-ferreting (in a good way) Echo Theater Company, heralds a truly unique voice for our times—someone who takes on big and troubling societal issues not often addressed and boldly explores how forces beyond our control plague us as we careen through our shaky existence on this risky planet.

Jesse (Zeke Goodman) is a sweet Jewish lad from North London who falls bigtime for Alex (Sharae Foxie), a mixed-race woman who is equally taken by him. As Laughton's play flips in a dizzying timewarp back and forth from the year they meet to the year their relationship crumbles due to the increasingly more frightening cultural winds of recent times, we are whisked along on their difficult ride as they navigate the current ever-encroaching epidemic of antisemitism, as well as dealing with which side the partners land on issues of the Zionization of Israel and the power-mad Benjamin Netanyahu 's brutish war on the Palestinians.

Laughton's themes are fascinating and thought-provoking, made all the more effective by his smooth knack for writing dialogue that's both real and euphonious. That doesn't mean there aren't problems bringing One Jewish Boy to life. Although director Chris Field's kinetic staging and Justin Huen's exceptionally clever and illuminating set help keep the piece moving and somewhat decipherable, I found the way the action zipped back and forth through the initially endearing and later traumatic aspects of Jesse and Alex' romance became jumbled, confusing, and ultimately repetitious.

Laughton heavily resorts to either gooey lovemaking or bitter confrontation to tell his tale—it might be interesting for someone more ADHD than I am to count the number of times one character tells the other "I love you" in the 90-minute playing time. I think the audience should be given credit to see the point without hitting us over the head to make sure we get it.

When my own first play debuted in 1994 at the Victory Theatre here, the artistic directors Maria Gobetti and the lategreat Tom Ormeny tried to get me to make judicious trims before opening night, all of which I adamantly refused to do. It was my first play, see, and at the time I thought everything I had ever wanted to say had to be included in this one piece. By the time the film version of Surprise Surprise was shooting a decade later and four other of my babies had been produced in the interim, every cut or alteration the producer/director asked me to make in my screenplay I slashed with complete abandon.

I suspect such a case of First Play-itis might have also befallen One Jewish Boy, as the writer may just have tried to take on too much, too many themes and issues to address at one time by two characters, no matter how sturdy the actors and director may be.

Goodman is absolutely winning as the fragile but lovable Jesse, a truly heartfelt performance that, with Fields' expert guidance, keeps the conspicuous indulgences of the play somewhat at bay. When Jesse's life is all but insurmountably challenged when he is savagely attacked on the London streets simply because of his ethnicity, his character's lingering fear and pain is authentic and touchingly realized.

Foxie, however, has a far more difficult task, one that never quite gels as Goodman's conflicted love interest. Although I think most of the fault lies in the writing, I found her Alex glaringly one-note; except for brief moments of levity and/or happiness, her tortured, frantic overreactions become too annoying to make the character someone we can care about. Still, there’s not much room for subtlety as Alex is written.

This issue clearly must circle right back to Laughton. How are we expected to be sympathetic toward someone who professes her undying love for her partner over and over again, yet is willing to abandon her marriage and infant child when her lover needs her the most is nearly unconscionable. I guess Alex missed the part of the ceremony when she promised all that "for better and worse" stuff.

Despite my druthers here, One Jewish Boy still provides an excellent theatrical experience, made all the better by how Goodman, his director, and designer are able to lift a problematic yet promising new work to an impressively elevated status due to their consummate skill and imagination.

THROUGH APR. 28: Echo Theater Company, Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Av., LA. 747.350.8066 or EchoTheaterCompany.com 

Photo by Jeff Lorch 

Rogue Machine

There has been a slight whiff of controversy surrounding Rogue Machine’s west coast debut of Sophie Swithinbank’s searing Edinburgh Fringe and off-West End award-winning Bacon.

Granted, I had personally been forewarned that experiencing this piece in the Matrix’ living room-sized upstairs Henry Murray Stage could be an unsettling and even harrowing experience—the controversy being that the company should have added some kind of warning label to its announcements and advertising—but still, when asked by director Michael Matthews as I negotiated the stairs back down to the lobby after the performance if I was all right, the only thing that gurgled up from my throat probably sounded as though it came from a wounded animal.

It would be virtually impossible for anyone alive and breathing to not to be triggered by being thrown into the psychological maelstrom of Swithinbank’s 80-minute two-character drama, but for anyone who has survived early sexual abuse in their life, it might just be borderline agonizing.

Designer Stephen Gifford has cleverly transformed the small attic-like playing space above the Matrix mainstage into a cramped London cafe, with blackboard menus on the walls and only a long wooden table and two benches as set pieces. From here, a socially inept young Cockney waiter named Mark (Wesley Guimaraes) tidies up the place as the audience files in, occasionally stopping to help a patron or two find seats or move chairs to offer the best view from one of the makeshift theatre’s three sides.

“This is my story,” he finally begins by addressing us directly, “and I’ve never told it to anyone before so… don’t interrupt… if that’s okay.”

Mark’s story unfolds in two separate time zones: the cafe in the present and four years earlier when he first meets a fellow troubled teen named Darren (Jack Lancaster) when he and his single mother relocate and he begins studies at a new school where hopefully he won't be bullied for his "sensitivity.”

There’s an instantaneous sense of danger when Mark first sees Darren, who exudes trouble just standing quietly across the room. When Lancaster’s Darren moves, he moves with the incongruous grace and tension of a hungry trapped lion and when he speaks, his delivery recalls one of Malcolm MacDowell’s droogs in A Clockwork Orange (and may I offer a shoutout here to dialect coach Tuffet Schmelzle, who definitely knows her stuff).

Although it's quickly apparent this kid isn't someone anyone should feel comfortable approaching, there’s an immediate dance-at-the-gym forbidden attraction between the two young men—and as threatening as Darren may appear to be, he's obviously in desperate need of someone to care about him.

What develops, as Mark’s narrative switches back and forth in time, is anything but healthy and the more intense the boys’ relationship becomes, the more uncomfortable it is to watch it unfold in such close proximity. There are moments it’s almost hard not to instinctively reach out physically and try to stop what’s happening right in front of us, something heightened by the remarkably rich and edgy performances of Guimaraes and Lancaster.

What Swithinbank has forged is one of the most startling and unnerving new works since the early 60s when Edward Bond upended the stodgy London theatrical community when his raw and brutal Saved was widely praised and vilified at the same time, eventually resulting in the end of British censorship and the overreaching chokehold of the culturally powerful Lord Chamberlain’s Office.

The often quite surprisingly poetic Bacon is as equally shocking as Saved but also fully embraces issues of internalized homophobia, agonizing self-hatred, and the disenfranchisement of young people in our society due to the inequities of manufactured class disparities and suppressed sexual orientation.

It would be hard to imagine two actors more skillful at bringing these complex characters to life, right down to their individual abilities to make us fully believe they are teenagers without resorting to overt gimmickry and gee-willikersy deliveries.

Guimaraes is heartbreaking as the vulnerable, introverted Mark, who in a little over an hour goes from a put-together, crisply pressed, agonizingly self-conscious adolescent to a broken, physically diminished young man fighting demons and torn between his feelings of revulsion and temptation.

Lancaster is nothing short of riveting as Darren, the menacing perpetual troublemaker raised in a loveless lower-class home where his drunken father beats the hell out of him on a regular basis.

What these two arresting actors create together is testament to true ensemble performance, bouncing off one another expertly and oddly, beyond the twisted and doomed nature of Mark and Darren’s relationship, managing to generate an unsettling tenderness in their love that leaves us as observers rather uncomfortable about how much, down deep, we want to root for them.

The design aspects of this production are exceptional, transforming a nearly unplayable space into a perfect venue for this in-your-face drama. Kudos to Gifford and sound designer Christopher Moscatiello for adding to the visceral illusion, as well as Joy DeMichelle for intimacy direction and Jen Albert for fight choreography that keeps things strikingly real and, in Albert’s case, downright gladiatorial.

Still, the superglue that holds this all together is almost palpable—and that’s clearly the astonishingly fluid hands-on direction of Matthews, who not only has guided the vitally epochal elements of Sophie Swithinbank’s Bacon to fruition but has staged the action dazzlingly and with almost perceptible confidence in his own boundless creativity.

Matthews bravely utilizes the inherent claustrophobic nature of the space, the lighting and sound, and the actors themselves continuously repositioning the production’s few set pieces, to create pure theatrical magic that leaves its audience moved, exhausted, and nearly—or in my case totally—speechless.

THROUGH APR. 20: Rogue Machine at the Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Av., LA. 855.585.5185 or roguemachinetheatre.net

Photo by John Dlugolecki

Open Fist at Atwater Village Theatre

When Bat Boy: The Musical had its world premiere at the Actors’ Gang in 1997, it was one of the most enjoyable theatrical events of the season.

Based on a series of sensationalized “true” stories appearing in the notoriously ridiculous supermarket check-out tabloid Weekly World News in the early 90s, splashed with headlines about a half-human/half-bat teenage boy discovered living in a cave in rural West Virginia, the deliciously irreverent and equally sensationalized Bat Boy: The Musical went on to an off-Broadway run that netted Lucille Lortel and Outer Critics Best Musical awards before moving on to London and great national and international success.

To say this cult classic’s book by Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming and the lyrics of composer Laurence O’Keefe have held up in time is an understatement. Indeed, in the musical’s suitably raucous revival mounted by Open Fist, a company always so good at acing zany, it may just be even more relevant today.

Back in 1997, I don’t remember leaving the Gang’s old El Centro space feeling there had been any overlying message lurking beneath the inventive silliness of the script but now, 28 years later, the clear connection between our flailing country’s current political nightmare and the good Christian townsfolk of Hope Falls demonizing poor misunderstood Bat Boy because of his obvious differences is front and center.

The musical has evolved to become a tongue-in-cheek indictment of all those deluded A’murkins who voted for a proudly racist documented loser to be the leader of the free world—and even more unbelievably, did so twice. With song titles such as the 700 Club-esque “Christian Charity” at the top of the show devolving into “More Blood/Kill the Bat Boy” in Act Two, the comparison could not be more omnipresent.

Although varying levels of proficiency are also present throughout director Pat Towne’s game and hard-working ensemble playing Hope Falls’ scary body of bigots, their collective eagerness and Jennifer Maples’ precisionally rehearsed synchronized choreography quickly win us over. Despite the soon forgivable unevenness the cast may suffer—and overlooking a few flat notes sneaking in here and there during musical numbers—when this eclectic troupe breaks into Maples’ barn-dance moves, the whole stage lights up with their boundless energy and elicits instant admiration for their infectious enthusiasm.

There are standout performances from Robyn Roth and Bethany Koulias as Meredith and Shelley Parker, the mother and daughter who champion then fall in love with their initially caged houseguest, especially notable in the show’s best ballad, “Three Bedroom House.” And although Amir Levi, one of my favorite theys, spends most of the show as we’ve never before seen him wearing costumer Michael Mullen’s most farmery farmerwear while playing one of the agrarian locals, his true dazzling persona emerges in the second act as a deliciously pagan Pan to deliver the showstopping “Children, Children.”

Still, Bat Boy could never work without someone truly dynamic donning those infamous ears in the title role. Ben Raanan proves himself to be a spectacular musical performer, a native Angeleno and recent NYU grad in Vocal Performance whose bio says he’s “moved back to LA to seek out the theatre community here.”

Well, he found us—and we’re the better for it. Rannan smoothly provides the heart and soul of Bat Boy, particularly in his early feral energy which reminded us of our lategreat pug Genji and later after his "civilization" delivering O’Keefe’s hauntingly plaintive “Let Me Walk Among You.”

Of course, none of this would gel without the cleverly frisky staging of Towne, the Hee-Haw-like elbows-and-knees choreography of Maples, as well as the contribution of Mullen’s whimsical costumes, Brad Bentz’ rustic multi-leveled raw wood set design, Brandon Baruch’s lighting plot, and the spirited onstage band led by keyboardist Sean Paxton.

The only issue needing improvement is the sound, with voices often swallowed up into the rafters of the former warehouse—something surely difficult to overcome but can be tamed since other musicals have performed in the same space and made it work.

Still, the star of this modern classic will always be Farley and Flemming’s playfully jocular script and O’Keefe’s nifty lyrics which feature some worldclass unexpected rhymes that overshadow his less-than memorable score.

Then there’s that nagging message hidden among the jokes. I’ve been told recently I’m the only reviewer who could sneak in my personal societal and political dissent while writing about a production of Mary Poppins. I didn’t have to work for that to happen covering Bat Boy: The Musical; it’s all lurking right there as an intellectual aftertaste following your last bite of a state fair funnelcake batter-dipped corndog.

THROUGH MAY 18: Open Fist Theatre Company at the Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Av., LA. 323.882.6912 or www.openfist.org

Photo by Matthew Murphy

Pantages Theatre

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past quarter-century, you have to know when you’re about to enter anything orbiting around the enchanted and fantastical realm of Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling's inimitable Potterverse, you're in for something incredibly spectacular. The author calls Harry Potter and the Cursed Child the eighth installment of her Potter franchise and, although many have expected it to become yet another film in the series, she and her collaborators insist it will remain a work created strictly for the stage. 

After long and highly successful runs in London’s West End, on Broadway, the Curran in San Francisco, and many other major cities around the world, this unique original live theatrical installment of Rowling‘s complex saga of magicians and Muggles and just plain kids learning how to exist with integrity and a moral compass in our troubled and conflicted times, continues to sweep us all away—no matter what our age or station in life—into an immersive and beloved world like no other on earth.

I certainly expected the nonstop cavalcade of magic and illusions the show hurls out at its audience in a continuous bombardment of jaw-dropping wonders, but I didn’t expect the script by Jack Thorne, created from a story he developed with Rowling and the production’s director John Tiffany, to be an intricately woven study of how to live with the past and incorporate it into our daily lives in all its triumphs and all its disappointments. Cursed Child’s large assemblage of familiar characters and their descendants interact with all-too human emotions, uncannily able to ultimately deliver a missive about personal growth, tolerance, and acceptance that has the potential to impact the way we view the world around us.

Beginning 19 years after the place where Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows left off, the play follows Albus Severus Potter (Emmet Smith), the teenage son of Harry (John Skelley), who is himself now the middleaged Head of the Ministry's Department of Magical Law Enforcement. The characters we’ve come to know and love have grown into adults, rife with many of the problems and concerns that most every adult encounters when suddenly thrust into a society that’s not always fair or equitable. You know, like now.

Harry and his wife, the former Ginny Weasley (Trish Lindstrom) are now almost ordinary parents with children who must measure up to the Boy Who Lived's legend and heroism, not an easy task for Albus, who doesn’t ace his studies at Hogwarts with the same skill as his famous overachieving father. This causes a rift in their father and son relationship that, beyond the Cursed Child’s usual epic battle between good and evil, also dominates the story.

This production is visually astonishing in every regard, the huge scope of transporting it and setting it up possibly explaining the reason why it's landed here at the Pantages until June 22, a far lengthier run than most national tours booked into Nederlanderland. The majestic set by Christine Jones is wildly imposing and whimsically steampunk-ish, geared to metamorphose miraculously and conjure things the audience could not possibly hallucinate on their own.

The play is almost a musical except for its lack of singing, featuring an impressively rich score by Imogen Heap and featuring a large ensemble of silent performers choreographed by Stephen Hoggett who between scenes race across the stage in something reminiscent of the tight circles of peasants who so memorably energized the original production of Evita. Aside from scurrying around the massive Pantages stage in a rush of busy Koyaanisqutsi hurriedness, they cleverly make the show’s many short filmic scene changes happen as they do, camouflaging the clunkiness of bringing on and off tables and doorways and other prop pieces here hidden behind the distraction of a flurry of long black wizard-wear cloaks that conceal their actual mission.

Of course, the star of the show has to be Jamie Harrision’s worldclass and inexplicable illusions, the dazzling barrage of Copperfield-esque magic completely impossible to imagine could be happening live in real time. From flying tricks that would make Peter Pan stop in midflight to fire and smoke effects and a somewhat disquieting wavering device that makes the entire stage wobble whenever the characters time travel—topped by fantastic onstage transformations that zap actors into suddenly becoming other actors before our very eyes—the Los Angeles engagement of the Tony and Olivier-honored masterpiece is certainly an event that should stay sold out for its entire run. Whether attended by the usual troupe of avid theatregoers, the plethora of rampant Harry Potter fans, or those of us who periodically head to Las Vegas not to drop our life savings but to be dazzled by the lights and pageantry of the most lavish Cirque du Soleil extravaganzas on the Strip, this has it all.

The only omnipresent bit of an Achilles heel hampering the overall concept, something that perhaps can be explained by the long-running touring roadshow nature of the production, is that often the performances turned in by the majority of the principal castmembers make it feel more like a show mounted at a theme park than a theatre. Many of the actors are simply too loud and too over-the-top, leaving Thorne’s otherwise thoughtful and sincerely moving script to veer off into melodrama.

There are a few notable exceptions to this, particularly Aidan Close, who as Scorpius Malfoy, the outcast son of Harry’s old arch-nemesis Draco, brings a sweet and believable sincerity to his role, especially when the relationship between he and Albus begins to develop beyond friendship—which is itself a surprising storyline twist that sanctifies one of the play’s most endearing and poignant messages.

Katherine Leask seamlessly morphs from the dastardly Professor Umbridge to deliver a welcoming tribute to the cherished memory of Maggie Smith’s McGonagall, Larry Yando contributes a wonderfully droll recreation of Alan Rickman’s Severus Snape, and in a brief cameo, Mackenzie Lesser-Roy gives the show’s most delightful comedic performance as the grandly over-dramatic Moaning Myrtle.

When award time comes to the Southland at the end of the year, there’s much to expect from this production, from its magnificent design aspects to a script that unwaveringly goes far beyond simply entertaining, not to mention Heap’s infectious score, Hoggett’s flashy choreography, and Tiffany’s quixotically kinetic staging. Still, it doesn’t take a latter-day Dumbledore to predict that what will bring the highest honors to the Los Angeles run of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will definitely be Harrison’s unearthly special effects which leave the audience dizzily mesmerized by a world that has to be experienced live to appreciate.

 THROUGH JUNE 22: Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. 800.982.2787 or broadwayinhollywood.com 

Photo by Lizzie Kimball

Broadwater Studio Theatre

I confess I spend a lot of time when at home enjoying the grisliest of grisly bad horror movies—and as a critic, let me also admit the conundrum here is that the cornier they are the better—but never has a stage nail-biter managed to freak me out.

Although it’s not a traditional thriller, the world premiere of the now several time-extended The Civil Twilight by PEN USA and LADCC Award-winner Shem Bitterman is an inherently spooky and even sinister new play that truly put me on the edge of my seat.

Part of that reaction is the proximity of the action. Entering the Broadwater’s ultra-intimate Studio Theatre, a “room” about big enough to host a small actors’ workshop, the size of the claustrophobic space immediately gives the sense of walking directly into a rundown motel room in a desolate mid-American locale. It’s the kind of place where before unpacking, one first checks the mattress for crawly things and the bathtub for bloodstains—something that actually happened to me once on tour with a play in the boonies.

There’s a raging storm outside, a weather event nasty enough to send two stranded traveling strangers (Taylor Gilbert and Andrew Elvis Miller) into sharing a cab from the shutdown local airport to this bleak southwestern-themed motel decorated in early Walmart, an annoying development made worse by the fact that the place only has one last room available they’ve reluctantly decided to share.

Ann is a kind of dumpy, salt-of-the-earth suburban wife, while John is a rather put-together businessman-type who keeps things close to the vest and may or may not be someone to trust.

At least he’s good for finding ways to turn on the lights and sleuth out why the room smells as though something died in it—which it has. Soon he is using one of the room’s only two towels to remove a dead ferret or some other now unrecognizable small putrid animal from under the bathroom sink.

The pair soon finds they have a lot more in common than they initially realized, as John is a regionally famous radio personality and Ann, as it turns out, is his professed biggest fan, someone who knows the names of his wife and kids and, figuratively speaking, where all the bodies are buried.

Or does she.

A kind of creepiness soon begins to descend over this purgatory-like motel room like an ominous shroud. Bitterman’s quirky play is full of twists and turns that give the sense that it could have been an old classic Twilight Zone written by Sam Shepard. In fact, when this play closes, someone should grab up the space as is for a revival of Fool for Love.

There are many twists and turns in this tense 80-minute ride and, although some are a tad far-fetched, it feels eerily personal as the audience sits in such close proximity to the performers that, if one sneezed, the other might be inclined to say “Bless you.” After the performance, when introduced to my partner Hugh, Miller actually said it was as though they’d already met since it felt as though he had shared an airplane-sized bottle of Tanqueray with him at the onstage table placed inches from where we were seated.

Under the sturdy directorial hand of Ann Hearn Tobolowsky, the crisscrossing shocks and snaking revelations that crash through the play are sharply realized. Still, there's a far deeper and intentionally camouflaged message here: a kind of lament for the rapid decline of rural midwestern values that leaves the door open for what Bitterman calls “hucksters and charlatans [who] for a few bucks or some cheap outrage offer a path to desperately needed change”—you know, like the current conman pulling the wool over the eyes of half of our countrymen that may just result in him being in a position to soon destroy our society even more than he already has.

This play, which opened here in mid-October, proved to be one of 2024’s most unique and hauntingly memorable events, especially considering a great writer’s good fortune to have developed it in collaboration with a director as accomplished as Tobolowsky and two veteran actors as consistently efficacious and arresting as Gilbert and Miller.

As John, Miller’s calm demeanor that hides a frightened and miserable trapped animal ready to spring is a remarkable accomplishment, only slightly overshadowed by the jarring intensity of Gilbert, winner of my TicketHolder Award for Best Actress of 2024 for this performance, who caps a long career of consistent excellence. Her work here, finding both a strength and vulnerability in the multi-faceted role of Ann, is the performance of a year in a year full of great performances in Los Angeles, a miraculous thing since it was born and cultivated in this unobtrusive and nondescript playing space.

Druthers? Only a few. Joel Daavid’s set is impressive but not dirty and grubby enough for how the room is described, while both actors sometimes come off less troubled by the icky conditions in which they find themselves than they should be, especially after first finding a decomposing critter as an unwelcome roommate.

When Miller takes off his wet jacket, he seems to know where the hook to hang it is located without a quick look around an unfamiliar space and when Gilbert turns down her bed, she appears far too confident that it doesn’t need a little exploration to prove it isn’t somewhere where one would be less inclined to wiggle their toes.

Without a doubt, however, Shem Bitterman’s The Civil Twilight is a totally unexpected eleventh-hour diamond in the rough that topped off our dynamic 2024 season with a bare-boned yet gleaming gem of extraordinary theatrical brilliance. I wanted to go home to take a shower and, in this case, that was a good thing.

THROUGH MAY 11: Broadwater Studio Theatre, 1076 Lillian Way, Hollywood. http://theciviltwilight.ludus.com

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?

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