EVERYBODY'S GOT ONE

CURRENT REVIEWS

by TRAVIS MICHAEL HOLDER

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

The Reservoir

Photo by Jeff Lorch

Geffen Playhouse

A new play about struggling with addiction, dealing with cognitively aging grandparents, and winning back a parent who’s given up on you. Sounds like a laugh a minute, doesn’t it? Well, surprisingly, it is.

The world premiere of The Reservoir at the Geffen heralds the auspicious professional playwrighting debut of Jake Brasch, someone with a unique ability to reveal more autobiographical shit about himself than even Jonathan Safran Foer could call forth—and who with this play instantly emerges as a major dramatist with a career to watch as it rockets to the heights.

On Takeshi Taka’s minimalist abstract set possibly meant to conjure a CT-scan slide of Brasch’s brain, The Reservoir begins as the writer’s alter-ego Josh (Jake Horowitz in a phenomenal, marathon performance) wakes up on the shore of a Denver reservoir with coughed-up schmutz caked on down the front of his Cosby sweater and little idea how he got there.

Having taken a medical leave from NYU, where’s he’s been a theatre major considering writing a queer-themed 12-step-oriented musical called Rock Bottom, it seems Josh instinctively headed home to Colorado to see if he could once again get sober with the help of his family. His long-suffering mother (Marin Hinkle) has been through this process many times before with her chronically alcoholic mess of a son, however, and isn’t exactly anxious to open her arms for another dose of heartache.

Josh turns to his grandparents for solace and acceptance, but in doing so realizes both sets of his eclectic elders are overwhelmed by problems of their own.

All four of his once-sharply focused grandparents are in the midst of some degree of cognitive decline and Josh, in an effort to save himself through becoming a champion determined to help slow their symptoms, discovers the concept of Cognitive Reserve, a theory that by keeping the mind and body challenged, the descent into dementia and Alzheimer’s can be diminished.

Of course, this is an admirable mission, but is it more about distracting himself to keep him from drinking vanilla extract by the bottle than it is saving them?

It’s obvious and hardly a secret that Brasch is writing about his own recovery and his own struggles with sobriety and finding his way through questions regarding his sexuality, his sense of worth, and trying to unravel how his Jewish roots figure into his battle against those incessant demons.

Creating this amazing work of incredibly personal art is a gift for us all—and the fact that Brasch can accomplish bringing us along on his difficult quest with such a welcomingly twisted sense of humor is revelatory.

His maternal grandmother Irene (Carolyn Mignini) is the worst off, relegated to a care facility and, although no longer really capable of holding a conversation or even acknowledging Josh’s presence, she can sing a few verses of unseasonal Crissmiss carols like a retired member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Her husband Hank (Geoffrey Wade), although still With Us, seems totally unaware of his descendant’s all-too public struggles when he runs into him at a bookstore while looking for a copy of The Fountainhead to give to his gastroenterologist, while his paternal granddad Shrimpy (Lee Wilkof) is not only enlightened but more than willing to make some knee-slapping jokes about Josh’s drinking or his sexuality.

Still, Josh’s strongest bond is with Shrimpy’s ex Beverly (Liz Larsen), a feisty no-nonsense electrical engineer who helps her grandson more than any of the others—even though she professes outright that she would prefer not to have to be so close and nurturing with him.

Director Shelley Butler is the quintessential partner for the unstoppable imagination and quirky style of Brasch, collaborating with him to implement his balls-out narrative devises, including moments when light changes signal that Josh has left the scene and is instead talking directly to us—prompting after one such episode for Beverly to ask him, “Where do you go when you do that?”

In fact, both pairs of grandparents stay seated upstage through most of the action, ready to step into the story at a moment’s notice and willing to comment on what’s happening even if they’re not really there. It’s a fascinating and wildly inventive example of the lack of limits inherent in creating theatrical magic.

Along the way, as Josh desperately attempts to heal, Brasch finds moments to mine humor in unexpected ways, sending up everything from vegan anarchist co-ops to senior aerobics (with Hinkle doubling as an ‘80s-esque Jane Fonda-like exercise guru who introduces herself as “I’m Jeanette and I’m a visionary”), and on to Shrimpy’s admission that he’s 85% straight but likes to look at images of dicks on his computer.

To say Butler’s cast is golden is a huge understatement. Horowitz is absolutely stunning as Josh, one of those roles that could make any actor sleep 18 hours a day between performances to keep from crashing.

All four actors playing his goofy grandparents are superlative, especially Wilkof’s charmingly off-kilter Shrimpy (no one’s called him Milton since grade school), who refers to his recently diagnosed condition as “diet Alzheimer’s,” and Larsen, who gives a standout tour-de-force performance as the tough but loving Beverly.

Hinkle is almost unrecognizable as she zips between supporting characters, as is Adrian Gonzalez playing a series of characters, including a beach cop, an abrasive psychologist author, and especially as Josh’s patient manager at a local bookstore who's hiding some heady secrets of his own.

This troupe of veteran performers are the heart of The Reservoir, which would never work as well without such talent and a palpable willingness to believe in Brasch’s outrageous over-the-top characters.

Still, it’s all about the discovery of a brilliant new dramatist whose star, with this exceptional debut, has clearly been launched into the stratosphere and I suspect will soon be recognized as one of the brightest in the galaxy.

As it was with early Durang or Charles Mee, some people might be a tad put off by Jake Brasch’s idiosyncrasies, his intrepid honestly, and his willingness to bare his soul, not to mention his delightfully skewed and inappropriate playfulness dealing with some usually dead serious subjects.

Personally, as a longtime primary caregiver to a partner slowly disappearing into dementia and Alzheimer’s, I was more than ready for a good swift kick in my poor-me pants provided by his bold and dark sense of humor.

“How many Alzheimer’s patients does it take to screw in a lightbulb?,” Shrimpy asks.

“To get to the other side.”

THROUGH JULY 20: Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Av., Westwood. 310.208.5454 or geffenplayhouse.org

Parade

Photo by Joan Marcus

Ahmanson Theatre

As someone who’s been active in theatre as an actor, director, playwright, and teacher for over seven decades and has been writing reviews of live performance for close to 40 of those years, all despite the uphill journey of championing such things tirelessly in a world more interested in real housewives and eager to know if TayTay and her… er… Tight End are still together, there are times when it begins to feel as though it’s been a waste of time.

I guess burnout is an issue in every profession but for me, when it hits, it hits bigtime, and I begin to wonder if my quest for windmills has been taken over by a geriatric lack of wind.

Then suddenly something comes along such as the six-time Tony nominated revival of Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown’s 1998 musical Parade, which won the authors Tonys for Best Book and Best Score, respectively, when it was first presented and this time out won for Best Revival of a Musical in 2023 and received incredibly deserving Best Director honors for Michael Arden’s visionary reinvention.

Now energizing the Ahmanson with both its expansive reconceptualization and its uncanny timeliness in calling out injustice and inequality as our own city finds itself under siege by a whole new breed of racists and powermongers, this Parade is far more powerful than squeaky military tanks and embarrassed-looking foot soldiers (once referred to as “suckers” and losers” by the Velveeta Voldemort) could ever conjure.

Uhry’s controversial subject matter for Parade has little in common with musicals about unseemly ogres arriving to rescue feisty princesses or dipshit teenyboppers proving Harvard Law can be an adorable place to study. It is truly the quintessential definition of what constitutes—and what bravely attempts to push the boundaries of—the genre of musical theatre.

Probably the last thing most artists would tackle when deciding to morph real life events into a musical would be the story of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory supervisor living in Atlanta who, in 1913, was glaringly railroaded and convicted, primarily because of his ethnicity, for the murder of one of his 13-year-old female employees.

It’s an ominous and ugly tale of prejudice, corruption, and broken dreams, yet somehow Pulitzer/Oscar/three-time Tony-winning playwright Uhry, along with lategreat Broadway superstar producer/director Harold Prince, believed the tragic saga of Frank and his loyal wife Lucille was worthy of a musical treatment.

Thanks to their sense of innovation and the richly semi-classical score by Brown, Parade is more a dark and brooding opera than it is a musical entertainment, something made gloriously noteworthy by Uhry’s absorbing account of one of the most barbaric moments in our country’s troubled history.

Brown’s contribution is the icing on the cake, giving a surprising number of performers in the 33-member ensemble their own individual chance to shine—and shine they do.

Perhaps one of the most exciting aspects of this particular mounting of the epic production is the cast. Under the exceptional musical direction of Charlie Alterman, this may be the most gifted group of vocalists gathered together on one stage I’ve been swept away by since 1985 when Porgy and Bess was indelibly revived by the Metropolitan Opera.

In the demanding role of Leo Frank, Max Chernin gives a dynamic, many-faceted performance that also quickly rises above the traditional limitations of musical theatre, growing and maturing and becoming ever more courageous as the character faces the inevitability of his fate.

As his stalwart wife Lucille, Talia Suskauer also finds a clear arc as the unstoppable spirit of her character’s evolution from dutifully subservient spouse to fiery, assertive advocate for her husband’s vindication becomes a clear path that would be easy to find a tad implausible.

Together, Chernin and Suskauer manifest a love and devotion between two people that is nothing short of awesome, something solidified by their emotional duets, “This is Not Over Yet” and the hauntingly beautiful eleventh-hour ballad “All the Wasted Time.”

As I mentioned, Brown has given almost all of the supporting players their own individual spotlight in his stirring song cycle, from Chris Shyer as standup Governor John Slaton (the mood-lifting “Pretty Music”) to Jenny Hickman as the grieving mother of the teenage victim (“My Child Will Forgive Me”) to Andrew Samonsky and Griffin Binnicker as the Trump-like villainous prosecutor and future Governor Hugh Dorsey and his pretend-pious ally Tom Watson (“Somethin’ Ain’t Right” and “Hammer of Justice,” respectively).

As the threatened witnesses coached to lie on the stand by Dorsey, Danielle Lee Greaves as the Frank’s compromised housekeeper (“Minnie’s Testimony”), and Robert Knight and Ramone Nelson as two factory workers led astray (“I Am Trying to Remember” and “That’s What He Said”), are all unforgettable in their own right.

In the musical’s prologue, “The Old Red Hills of Home,” Trevor James and Evan Harrington perfectly set the mood for the then-still rural Atlanta community fiercely proud to fight for their country, while perhaps the most infectious supporting performance comes from Jack Roden in an auspicious professional theatre debut as Frankie Epps, the dear, sweet young kid swept into the fervor of war, displaced values, and the enveloping shroud of racism and national pride. His rendition of “It Don’t Make Sense” is a heartbreaker.

Casting director Craig Burns and the Telsey Office deserve exorbitant praise for assembling this incredible, uniformly inspirational troupe of actors with voices beyond the best—but of course, the catalyst for what makes them so able to be incandescent is the gorgeous, heroic score by Jason Robert Brown, heir to the mantle as one of the greatest musical theatre composers of all time, each magical link of its chain forged through the years by the likes of George Gershwin, Kurt Weill, and Brown’s obvious mentor Stephen Sondheim.

Aside from the genius of Brown and the once again current urgency of Uhry’s message about intolerance and cultural confiscation in pursuit of ruthless political ambition, what lifts this revival into the stratosphere is the Tony-winning vision of director Michael Arden, who breathes a whole new passionate, highly kinetic life into an originally quite austere production that even the legendary Harold Prince himself failed to deliver with any palpable ardor.

Along with the choreographic team of Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant, most of the large ensemble seldom leave the stage, often when not in the action staying seated as observers on either side of set designer Diane Laffrey’s political platform of a playing space adorned with patriotic stars-and-stripes banners.

The continuous three-ring circus of movement is grand in scope and could have proven to be a boldly precarious choice but instead, it makes this production radiate with one of the best uses of design elements and performance showcasing in the history of modern stagecraft.

Any thoughts I may have had bubbling up lately about the ineffectual nature of the championship of great art—especially as the American theatre still fights with all its might to crawl back into relevance since the end of the pandemic—have been sent packing. The excitement this thrilling new materialization of the overlooked wonder of Parade, and the sheer brilliance and importance of what Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown gifted the world 27 years ago, has renewed my sense of purpose in a fresh and exhilarating way.

THROUGH JULY 12: Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Av., LA. 213.628.2772 or CenterTheatreGroup.org

Hamlet

Photo by Jeff Lorch

Mark Taper Forum

All I can say is they I must have better drugs than the rest of my colleagues. Playwright/director Robert O’Hara’s irreverent adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, commissioned and developed right here by the Center Theatre Group and now world premiering at the Taper, has been almost unanimously eviscerated by my fellow members of the LA press community—and I cannot possibly disagree more.

“This is a fucked-up place right here,” a character comments about the proceedings early on, an observation I personally found tremendously promising.

If there’s anything about this production I might have qualms about, it’s the title. If there are any potential patrons out there who aren't familiar with the work of O’Hara, they might think they’re about to see a traditional mounting of one of our most familiar classics, not realizing they’re about to see the title character going down on his Ophelia at first lights-up or watch him push the face of his on-the-side boytoy Horatio into his crotch, giving a whole new meaning to asking his bestie to “Swear on my sword” and “Play on my pipe.”

Later, in a conversation with Ophelia during the time when their mutual love interest has been shipped off to England, he tells her Hamlet has sent him letters too—and in iambic pentameter.

“Oh yeah,” she agrees, “that’s kinda his thing.”

I’ve heard a couple of remarks that ol’ Will must be spinning in his 409-year-old grave thanks to O’Hara’s assault on tradition, but I suspect it would be the contrary; I’m not entirely sure that the often bawdy and sly ol’ Bard didn’t have this exact same thing in mind way back in 1599. I’ll bet he’d applaud this bold and unhallowed interpretation but then, as old as I am, despite rumors suggesting otherwise I actually never met the guy.

Still, maybe it would have been better if O’Hara’s revision had been titled Hamlet Redux or Hamlet Deconstructed so everyone interested would instantly know they weren’t seeing a stripped-down version told in two hours without an intermission and that the production’s last third turns out to be an all-new and rather comedic riff on the original.

While the first two-thirds of O’Hara’s Inappropriate Night’s Dream remains a CliffNotes version of the tale, the final third morphs into an investigation of the pile of bodies stacked up by final curtain. Led by one trenchcoat-clad Inspector Fortinbras (played by Joe Crest, who also impressively doubles as the Oz-like projected head of Hamlet’s Ghost), this unexpected reinvention suddenly transforms into a clever tongue-in-cheek crossover between Columbo and The Pink Panther.

The story is filtered through what we see as a darkly atmospheric old film noir produced by something called the Elsinore Picture Corporation, a device further conjured by the production’s incredible design aspects. Clint Ramos’ grandly sweeping yet classically austere set design becomes the quintessential blank canvas for Yee Eun Nam’s moody and often jarring (and certainly potentially award-winning) projections, Lap Chi Chu’s starkly spectral lighting, and Lindsay Jones’ often unearthly sound and original music.

As Hamlet, someone another character observes “thinks he is in a Shakespeare play,” Patrick Ball (an actor unknown to me but makes my now want to start streaming The Pitt) bravely takes on a role even the most seasoned of thespians are reluctant to tackle because of all the pitfalls that most actors, regardless of their station, can fall into headfirst. It usually requires unwavering self-confidence for anyone to play the emotionally tortured Prince of Denmark, but Ball finds a fascinating new accessibility in the character without looking as though his performance is more ego-driven than heartfelt.

His task is aided considerably by O’Hara’s decision to give Hamlet’s familiar soliloquies a freshi innew twist, interspersing Ball’s delivery by alternating passages in echoing voiceovers. It’s as though Hamlet is in a conflicted conversation with his irresolute subconscious and the result is riveting.

Gina Torres is also a major standout as his mother Gertrude, giving a solid weight to the often fanciful and melodramatic ambiance O’Hara adopts in his direction, and Coral Pena adds an exciting street-smartness to her lusty, vaping Ophelia, who at one point sardonically proclaims she has no intention of marrying someone who’s “thirty-something and still a student.”

Hakeem Powell is endearing as the passed-around Horatio (“Everyone’s fucking Horatio,” Ophelia observes), soliciting a collective awwww from the audience when he speculates his relationship with Hamlet seems to be doomed. Fidel Gomez is hilarious as the Gravedigger who constantly corrects his job title as “Groundskeeper and occasionally Gravedigger,” while Ty Molbak and Danny Zuhlke provide more comic relief as Dumb and Dumber-inspired Rosencrantz and Guilenstern.

I would have easily added this ensemble cast to my possibilities for end-of-the-years honors except for the unnecessarily bellowing performance of Ariel Shafir as Claudius and Ramiz Monsef’s slapstick Polonius, which I found indulgent and unwatchable in a Jimmy Fallon sorta way.

There are so many things to praise about O’Hara’s delightfully heretical reinvention, something surely expected for anyone who remembers his Bootycandy or his Tony-nominated direction of the controversial Slave Play a few seasons back.

Here, Hamlet shouts out to Alexa to play music to accompany a rap version of the First Player’s monologue (a showstopping turn by Jaime Lincoln Smith) and when Hamlet is asked as he sits staring at his cellphone, “What do you read, my lord?”, the original “Words, words, words” is again the perfect answer.

I understand how some purists are shocked and offended by Robert O’Hara’s borderline blasphemous vision of one of the most well-known theatrical milestones, but I was all ready for it. Even perhaps the most famous line in any play in the history of theatre is not spared here:

“To be or not to be?” a character sarcastically slams. “That’s not a question… it’s a statement.”

THROUGH JULY 6: Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Av., LA. 213.628.2772 or CenterTheatreGroup.org

Unassisted Residency

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?