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 Phillip Pirolo

THROUGH JUNE 6: Moving Arts Theatre, 3191 Casitas Av., LA. movingarts.org/project/tasty-little-rabbit/ 

Photo by Evan Zimmerman 

Ahmanson Theatre / Segerstrom Center for the Arts

Lolita Chakrabarti’s stage adaptation of Yann Martel’s international Booker Prize-winning novel and Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning film Life of Pi is not really the star of this multi-award-winning production, which has settled in nicely at the Ahmanson and later will be moving on to the Segerstrom Center through mid-June to dazzle Southland children of all ages.

Originating and garnering immediate success in London in 2019, Life of Pi has since gone on to be awarded five of the West End’s Olivier Awards, including Best New Play, Best Scenic Design, and Best Lighting, as well as three Tony Awards, four Drama Desk Awards, and two Outer Critics Circle Awards when the massive production reached New York in 2023. What makes this production something for everyone to enjoy is not the script or the performances, however, but the phenomenal puppetry and design elements that were the major recipients of most of those well-deserved honors.

Life of Pi is the story of a teenage boy (a marathon turn by Taha Mandviwala) migrating with his politically displaced family and their crated zoo animals from Pondicherry, India to Canada to start a new life when a storm sinks their cargo ship in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean. Aside from Pi, the only other survivors of the disaster are a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a 450-lb. Royal Bengal Tiger called Richard Parker (so named due to a mix up on shipping labels).

As the animals are systematically and quite graphically dispatched in the usual survival-of-the-fittest manner, Pi is left with the most formidable and fearsome of predatory adversaries: Richard Parker himself.

In the demanding leading role, Mandviwala is sensational. According to his program bio, the young actor’s direction has been as a movement artist and to say that’s clearly apparent here is an understatement. If he were to be honored with any kind of recognition in this exhaustively demanding role, playing a pivotal character who literally never leaves the stage or for that matter ever stops moving, he could certainly be recognized for his stamina and unearthly athleticism.

This is something not said as a detriment to his exceptional performance, but his physical presence and abilities are assets that overshadow nearly everything in this production aside from the visual achievements. If nothing else, at the end of this extensive North American national tour next October, Mandviwala should at least be awarded with a long and restful vacation, perhaps at that Thai wellness resort where this season’s White Lotus was set—as long as Gary promises to leave him alone.

The acting in general is reminiscent of a children’s theater presentation and there’s nothing wrong with that except bringing the yung’uns to this production might mean sending them back home with a few nightmares due to the omnipresent theme of the abuse of animals. First encountered in the early scenes on dry land when Pi’s father (Rishi Jaiswal) feeds his kids’ pet goat to Richard Parker to teach his offspring a lesson about the Circle of Life and all that, it’s the part of the tale I personally had a hard time enjoying—and I’m a few thousand decades older than Pi.

Although the death and mutilation are performed El Topo-style upon Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell’s astounding lifesize puppets, I still cringed and sometimes had difficulty watching. For a lot of children in the audience, I couldn’t help thinking the death and carnage might be a little too grizzly—yet as a lover of the most horrifying of horror films, I ironically would have had no problem if the graphic rending of flesh had been performed on members of my own species.

Chakrabarti’s adaptation is the CliffsNotes version of Martel’s original novel and Lee’s film, rudimentarily touching briefly on what might be dubbed Philosophy Lite, but the stars of Life of Pi are the breathtakingly innovative design elements, created under the direction of Max Webster (with tour direction by Ashley Brooke Monroe). The visual magic that surprises us all on Tim Hatley‘s incredibly mobile set is continuously jaw-dropping, with worldclass contributions from Tim Lutkin and Tim Deiling’s fantastic lighting to Andrzei Goulding’s dazzling video and animation designs.

There’s no doubt the biggest wonder of all is the puppet design by Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell, as well as the movement of their enchanted creatures by Caldwell manipulated sometimes by three clearly visible puppeteers per animal, whose presence soon vanishes as we are wholeheartedly swept up into the fantasy. Perhaps the subtlety of their movements and facial expressions are part of what made me squirm when the zebra is disemboweled while still groaning and twitching or the orangutan loses his head but still, the imagination utilized to make every animal interaction so real is the absolute best thing about this Life of Pi.

Don’t worry about finding the proper depth in the storyline; the Cirque du Soleil meets Warhorse nature of this production will be something you’ll never forget.

THROUGH JUNE 1: Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Av., LA. 213.628.2772 or CenterTheatreGroup.org

JUNE 3 - 15: Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Dr., Costa Mesa. 714.556.2787 or SCFTA. org

Photo by Craig Schwartz 

Antaeus Theatre Company

As anyone who knows me or is familiar with my theatre commentary over the years can probably attest, Tennessee Williams is my spirit animal.

My worship of the 20^th century’s greatest playwright began at age 12 when my head exploded and my consciousness of theatre as an artform first began to germinate as I sat in the kitchen of a very famous actress, running lines with her before she left for London to film a leading role in the film version of one of Tenn's greatest plays. It was truly a pivotal moment in my life, the moment when I first realized that being an actor meant more than just being cute and loud.

Skip to several years later when I spent several months during the original pre-Broadway run of The Night of the Iguana being chased relentlessly around the dressing room by Williams in the flesh, to my adult years performing many of the master’s most demanding roles throughout my lifetime—including being cast as his most obvious alter-ego Quintin in Small Craft Warnings and later playing another quasi-Tennessee in Lament for the Moths—to my later days teaching a class I developed and lecturing about the life and work of Williams.

I now find at this point in my long life writing a review of any production of a work by my literary idol makes me a fairly demanding (albeit cranky) critic. That’s said, I still was mighty excited about seeing what the venerable Antaeus Theatre Company, under the keen eye of director Carolyn Ratteray, would do to make The Glass Menagerie, Tenn’s first success and one of the greatest of his masterworks, something new again.

Also, having appeared opposite castmembers Gigi Bermingham and Emily Goss, Gigi as Nurse Ratched to my Cheswick in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at the Rubicon and Emily as Nina to my Dr. Sorn in Stupid Fucking Bird at the Boston Court, I knew firsthand what committed, generous artists they both are and was confident it would do my ol’ hard heart good to see them interpret such complex and often misunderstood characters.

Instead of something totally new and fresh, however, this production is a reverent return to everything the play unleashed when it first seized the attention of the world in 1944 and catapulted Tenn from obscurity to international acclaim at age 33. What Antaeus and Ratteray have accomplished with this glorious return to Menagerie is nothing short of sensational. It's simply quintessential Williams with an emphasis on the poetry of his language that many other revivals over the years have missed.

The design aspects are all uniformly dynamic and yet faultless in their austerity, including Angela Balogh Calin’s imaginative set, including see-through walls on which are inscribed passages of handwriting I believe are authentic scribbles by Williams himself; Beryl Brachman’s painstakingly authentic costuming; Jeff Gardner‘s haunting and haunted sound design; and especially Karyn Lawrence’s evocative lighting. All add tremendously to Ratteray’s staging which, although occasionally feeling a little too busy, contributes palpably to telling the story of Williams’ most overtly autobiographical work.

Still, what elevates this production to the top of my list of the best of Williams I have ever seen is the performances of the four sensational actors in these familiar roles. Although both Josh Odsess-Rubin as Tom and Alex Barlas as the Gentleman Caller begin at too high a fever pitch and find Tenn’s poetic words a little too precious, both settle in and give remarkable performances I believe were most apparently activated when they began to relate to and really listen to the words spoken by the two incredible actresses playing Amanda and Laura, those heartbreaking characters based on Tenn’s own overbearing mother and delicately damaged sister Rose.

In class working on scenes lifted from Williams and when directing productions of his plays, I often use the phrase TennTrap, relating to the deep hole many actors fall into when performing the works of the incomparably quirky writer whose often flowery language and fierce insistence on maintaining a kind of lyrical rhythm in his dialogue can easily descend into caricature.

It’s easy for anyone playing the mother-from-hell to fall into stereotypical lilting speech patterns, something Bermingham stealthily avoids with consummate skill. Too often, we are presented with an Amanda who is just flighty, annoying, and so self-involved you begin to want to tune her out, but Beemingham digs far deeper into the character and avoids the traps of singsong-y Southern belle-itis, delivering an indelible portrayal of a maddeningly overpowering and difficult mother who, under all the pretense, despite being strong as a bull desperately loves and cares about the future of her children.

Goss is her perfect counterpart as the physically and emotionally disabled Laura, breathtakingly simple in her choices and giving us a Laura far more than just the standard cartoon character version of a pitiable and helpless young girl trapped in what she sees as her inadequacies. I have never before experienced seeing Laura played with such an obvious sweetness and flashes of a sense of humor lurking below her traumatized exterior protective shell, something signature to the multi-faceted talents of Goss.

Speaking of personal connections here, my own background with Menagerie goes back to the mid-1960s when I had the intense yet flawed experience playing the Gentleman Caller opposite Jo Van Fleet, one of the greatest actors of the time, as Amanda. When I was first cast in the production I was, as Tenn would say, “over the moon” until I arrived at the tiny playhouse on Chicago's northside where we would be playing, a rather rundown dinner theatre adjacent to a bowling alley. After a meal of rubber chicken and cheap wine, there we’d be acting our hearts out in the most tender and quiet moments of the script when suddenly from the other side of the wall we’d hear the sound of a ball racing down a lane following by the knocking down of pins and the screams of people in attendance.

I wondered back then how it could be possible that the Oscar-winning Van Fleet would be here in this space performing the role which she would not long after assume on Broadway, taking over for Maureen Stapleton in the first successful New York revival of the play, but it didn’t take me long to see the reason why she was reduced to such a minor assignment. All of us, especially the actor who played Tom, had to also learn Amanda’s lines to cover for her the many times when she would be too inebriated to remember her words or even walk in the right direction.

That experience was an unknowing signpost of what was ahead in the life and career of Tenn and, over the years as he descended into debilitating depression and drug addiction, the sound of bowling pins toppling and the sight of a great lady of the theatre being saved from falling off the small stage mirrored the lost early wonder of a genius who had so energized my own early obsession with the theatrical arts.

For me, attending a production as flawless and almost religiously devoted to the timeless beauty of The Glass Menagerie as this has lifted it to become one of the highpoints of a very fruitful season in our sometimes culturally-challenged reclaimed desert climes. If I were currently teaching one of my classes exploring the life and work of Tennessee Williams, without a doubt attendance in this exquisite production of one of  the 20th century’s most enduring classics would be absolutely and totally mandatory.

THROUGH JUNE 2: Antaeus Theatre Company, 110 E. Broadway, Glendale. 818.506.1983 or Antaeus.org

Photo by Jason Williams

I have to admit that after seven-plus decades being obsessed with all things live and lively theatrical, I do have a tendency to select other projects to see or be a part of than the venerable plays of William Shakespeare.

It’s not that I’m unappreciative of the great classics and not properly in awe of their profound influence on everything that came after, but I’ve seen ‘em all and acted in many of ‘em for so many years that I could practically recite the most famous passages along with the actors.

As for variations of the masterworks, I’ve seen some memorable efforts and yes, some agonizingly misguided transformations. There have been productions set in the old west, in a teenage detention center, n the middle of a political coup, in colonial India, in an Italian circus, and of course there’s that musical version of one of the Bard's most well-known plays that takes place in the mean streets of New York City where poor doomed Tony is sure something good is coming.

Some adaptations work; most don’t. In the case of Tracy Young and Lisa Wolpe’s contemporary take on of one of Shakespeare's most difficult plays, The Winter’s Tale, Young’s uncanny ability to successfully translate the 400-year-old verse into something far more accessible to the modern ear—without losing the iambic pentameter—breathes a refreshing new life into the convoluted tale.

The first half of the play has always seemed at odds with the second, beginning as a piece reminiscent of ol’ Will’s most tragic tragedies, while the second part suddenly morphs into one of his improbable mistaken identity-driven comedies.

Young, so long a visionary from her earliest notoriety creating outrageously off-kilter and imaginative work for adventurously rule-breaking companies such as The Actors’ Gang and Cornerstone, has an incredible knack for reinvention, both as a writer and director.

Here she guides a game and often charmingly over-the-top cast in the story of rage-filled jealousy, suspected infidelity with dire consequences, and eventual improbable redemption, by beginning the more dour part with a spirited holiday gathering complete with Pee-Wee’s Playhouse-esque dancing and the participants joyously singing along to that overworked Mariah Carey number we’ve all grown to hate resurface each November.

Somehow, this device defuses the horror unleashed by the green-eyed King Leontes (Daniel DeYoung) upon his wife Hermione (Spencer Jamison) and his childhood bestie Polixenes (Iman Nazemzadeh) he suspects are Doing the Deed behind his royal back.

Performed without an intermission and still clocking in at over two hours, this Tale has infinitely less Winter’s gloom than usual and more of a welcoming Cirque du Soleil attitude complimenting Young’s exceptionally comprehensible translation, made even more fun because the actors appear to be having so much of it.

There is a bit of unevenness in how the performers approach their roles, sometimes feeling more as if we’re watching several one-person shows simultaneously rather than a cohesive whole, yet miraculously under Young’s tongue-in-cheek leadership it comes together.

There's one particularly arresting performance from the ethereally gender-free Misha Osherovich as Perdita, the unsuspecting heir to Leontes’ throne, and some eye-catching supporting work in multiple roles from veteran scene-stealers KT Vogt, Victoria Hoffman, and Audrey Cirzan, among others.

Although this Winter’s Tale would be better performed as a summer’s tale at an outdoor venue and not in such close proximity to the audience as the Skylight stage demands—something that also makes the design work less impressive than it could be—it’s easy to get swept up into the silliness and the invention, affording a unique opportunity to discover something old can, with talent and infectious enthusiasm, indeed become new again.

THROUGH JUNE 14: Skylight Theatre, 1816½ N. Vermont Av., LA. www.skylighttheatre.org/thewinterstale

Photo by Lizzy Kimball

Road Theatre Company

An act of vandalism that can only be called out in these tenuous times as a serious hate crime is at the heart of Erik Gernand’s The Totality of All Things, now in its west coast debut at the LADCC-winning Road Theatre, a company always dedicated to supporting new work and never hesitant to take on controversial issues.

It’s the Fall of 2015 in Lewiston, Indiana, a small suburban town (population 6,405) where a swastika has been spraypainted over a high school journalism classroom bulletin board display featuring articles and photos relating to the then-recent Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

Lewiston is a place where the worst act of civil disobedience prior to this was when someone defaced a poster of a school production of Little Women by drawing a penis on Jo and veteran educator/school newspaper advisor Judith (Christina Clarisi) isn’t about to let this unacceptable offense go by easily with a slap on the wrist.

She assigns a gifted student reporter to cover the incident (an auspicious and touchingly poignant professional stage debut from Victor Kallett), knowing it will be a major milestone for him—especially considering she is the only person in Micah’s young life to whom he has come out as gay.

Of course, the issues explored could not be more timely as our country and the world is right here and now systematically being overtaken by an out-of-control egomaniacal racist intent on destroying everything I’ve spent my entire life trying to overcome.

What the decidedly well-meaning All Things has going for it is a highly intriguing script and a smashing ensemble cast, but there are also definite problems, most glaring among them what appears to be a somnambulant directorial hand and, far more importantly, a message that seems tone deaf in our agonizingly troubled times.

Although the characters are richly drawn and beautifully brought to life by this exceptional band of actors, Gernand, in a valiant effort to not demonize the play’s ultra-traditionalist community overwhelmed by the controversy, overplays his attempt to be fair to everyone he examines. While the conservative characters in his heartfelt play are intent on making the issue go away, Judith, apparently the town’s one-and-only hardboiled liberal (she’s known as the Nancy Pelosi of Lewiston), morphs from simply inflexible into downright monstrous. Her decisions come from a place of demanding truth, but at whose expense?

Carlisi does yeoman’s work trying to mine the humanity in her incredibly caustic and unlikable character while her fellow castmembers, particularly Meeghan Holaway as her right-wing and clearly homophobic best friend and Carlos Lacamara as the school’s principal desperately trying to make the problem disappear, struggle to breathe life into characters who ultimately come off as smallminded neo-dinosaurs stuck solidly in the past. Coupled with the entire cast being hung out on their own without cohesive leadership and hampered by pedestrian staging, the fact that as a team they’ve been able to find things in their characters to try to make us care about them regardless of their shortfalls is indicative of enormous dedication and skill.

Don’t get me wrong. I think Gernand is a gifted and promising dramatist with an impressive knack for creating intelligent dialogue and thought-provoking connections between his characters. You know, even critics are human and in all honesty, I have to wonder if my problem with the material might be my own recent encroaching loss of objectivity as the world burns—or is it in the timing of the Road to decide to present All Things in our current toxic environment where every damn day all thinking people are sucked into a vortex of helplessness and despair?

For me, there’s an inexcusable overlying sense of absolving the perpetrator of this heinous hate crime as just a misguided kid by adults willing to bury the import of it, while the play’s one champion of equality and decency becomes more of a black-hatted villain than a crusader for what's just and right.

This is not a time for forgiveness, I fear. There are not, as the Orange Traitor Tot said of Charleston white nationalists a few years ago, “some fine people on both sides.” I understand how and why Erik Gernand has attempted to make the inhabitants of this insular midwestern enclave basically good but misguided people caught up in a situation beyond their worldliness, but right now The Totality of All Things delivers an unintended missive about condonation I personally cannot shrug off. The stakes are far too high, no matter how unpremeditated the offense might have been.

THROUGH MAY 25: Road Theatre Company, 10747 Magnolia Blvd., NoHo. 818.761.8838 or RoadTheatre.org

Photo by Jeff Lorch

Rogue Machine Theatre Company at the Matrix

Here we are in the middle of the fourth month of 2025 and it says something for Rogue Machine that my top three choices for the best work done on Los Angeles stages so far this year—Will Arbery’s Evanston Salt Costs Climbing, Sophie Swithinbank’s Bacon, and now the world premiere of John Fazakerley’s splendid Corktown ’39—have all been presented by the same company.

Corktown ‘39 goes directly to the top of my list as one of the most fascinating, gripping, and well-produced plays that has come along in quite a spell. It’s a thrilling throwback to the topical political dramas of the 1930s and 1940s, reminiscent of works by American playwrights Eugene O’Neill and Clifford Odets and Irish writers such as Sean O’Casey, Brendan Behan, and John Millington Synge. Even more fascinating, Corktown ‘39 is based on historical fact and most of the characters were actual people.

Fazakerley's tale takes place in a workingclass Philadelphia neighborhood nicknamed for its heavy population of Irish immigrants who fled their starving and oppressed country even before the Nazi party in Germany was beginning to rear its ugly head and the Irish Republican Army began its aggressively militant effort to bring about independence for their homeland from England.

In the late 1930s, the IRA's cause was taken up by a scrappy group of real-life Irish expats living in Phily who called themselves Clan na Gael, a secret organization intent on doing their part to bring political freedom to Ireland. Their efforts included instigating and raising funds to help finance the bombings of key British installations and the primary focus of Fazakerley’s edge-of-your-seat drama, implementing a plot to assassinate Britain’s King George VI during his scheduled visit to America in 1939.

The action unfolds in Matt Mendelson‘s evocative polished-wood Victorian front parlor of the home of Mike Keating (Ron Bottitta), the Clan’s aide-de-camp to the IRA’s notorious chief Sean Russell (JD Cullum), the place where the group’s most active members gather to discuss their nefarious planning. Fazakerley’s beautifully constructed play begins as the sniper hired for the dastardly job (Jeff Lorch), a veteran mercenary of the Spanish American War, arrives to get his instructions from the visiting Russell, who’s in town for a meeting with his ailing predecessor Joe McGarrity (Peter Van Norden).

Keating rules over his home with his stiff-backed daughter Kate (Ann Noble), who appears to work as an unofficial operations manager for the Clan and figures prominently in the plot, as does her recently dumped boyfriend Tim Flynn (Thomas Vincent Kelly), another character based on an actual member of the organization. The only character innocently not involved in the espionage is Mike’s teenage son Francis (Tommy McCabe), someone Mike has stealthily tried to keep from knowing anything about the family’s involvement with the group’s dangerous plotting and purpose.

Although dialect coach Lauren Lovett could possibly use one more session guiding the cast, under the masterful leadership of director Steven Robman, to say that this troupe is about as perfect as any ensemble could be is something of an understatement; their work is a testament to the finest kind of collaboration seven exceptional artists could possibly achieve together.

Again, although it’s early in the year, mark my word: this septet of some of LA’s finest actors will prove hard to beat when awards season comes around again next winter. Bottitta, Van Norden, and Kelly are all at the very top of their game and Cullum, who has been turning in knockout performances here for many years, is at his most riveting as the sneaky yet somehow charmingly bumbling Russell.

Noble, who recently was honored with our LA Drama Critics Circle's Leading Performance Award for 2024 as Leni Riefenstahl in the world premiere of Tom Jacobson’s Schmitt Award-winning Crevasse at the Victory, here surpasses even that performance, bringing both the strength and determination of her character to life but tempering the hardened social numbness of Kate with the softness of a young girl in love when she falls for the dashing assassin hired to do the deed. The sweet blossoming of a new love between Kate and the world-weary Martin brings a lovely humanity to the otherwise hard-hitting piece, for me conjuring some vintage screen romantic moments that might have been assayed by Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart if Fazakerley had been born several decades earlier.

Newcomer McCabe, a recent graduate of USC’s School of the Dramatic Arts, steadfastly holds his own working with these more seasoned performers, bringing an almost period Andy Hardy-esque sweetness to Francis, a role that could easily be bulldozed under the uber-talented weight of his well-established costars.

Along with Mendelson’s magnificently appointed set, Dan Weingarten’s lighting and Christopher Moscatiello’s sound are equally exceptional, as are Kate Bergh’s meticulously realized costuming and Ned Mochel's precision fight choreography.

Rogue Machine’s mounting of Corktown ’39, the latest production adding yet another feather in the cap in what has become a nearly unstoppably worldclass theatre company, provides a quintessential example of what can be accomplished with a little grit and a whole lot of imagination. And if you find yourself pondering the question of how the persistent threat of fascism wafting around our current national crisis has sucked American life into the Upsidedown, let John Fazakerley’s incredible achievement serve as a warning of how easily threat can turn the simple pleasures of life as we know it into stark and malevolent reality.

THROUGH MAY 25: Rogue Machine at the Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Av., LA. 855.585.5185 or roguemachinetheatre.net 

Photo by Doug Engalla

Anyone who knows me or knows my work is probably aware of the guy I consider the most noteworthy dramatist of the 20th century. I have lectured over the years and teach a class I created called The Life and Works of Tennessee Williams and, as an actor, I have performed many times in plays by Tenn. I’ve also been a diehard champion of some of his later critically destroyed and heartbreakingly fragile plays, particularly the infrequently produced The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore and my personal latterday Williams favorite, Small Craft Warnings.

After his astronomical early success at age 33 with The Glass Menagerie and having been honored with two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama (A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948 and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955), Tenn’s life slipped more and more into the realm of the tragic and even absurd, things clearly reflected in his often fractured writing that began to feel more like a cry for help than work that could be considered to mount as a completely realized theatrical presentation.

Of all his universally slammed later plays, his 1968 one-act In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel is probably the shakiest of all, its initially vilified off-Broadway debut in 1969 hanging on for a mere 25 performances.

I had a great privilege of working with Tenn at age 14, a time when I revered him more than any other writer who made my head explode at that impressionable age. He was already a mess and although I spent a lot of the run being mercilessly chased around backstage by my literary idol, I still had faith in what he wrote and believed that, in general, the critics were being mean tearing apart someone who had not only become an icon but had been uncharacteristically public about the destructive nature of his personal life—and how that reflected on the creation of his characters.

It feels as though three of the four characters in Tokyo Hotel are thinly-veiled aspects of the great man himself, all begging for someone to realize the pain Tenn was in and somehow deliver him from the depression and addiction that was controlling his life. Having already in 1960 realized I was personally observing the genesis of what would become a lost and troubled man, the next time I met him, four years after the debut of Tokyo Hotel, he was more than simply broken; he was a shell of his former self. Because of this, to me the confusion and flaws weaving through his writing at the time could somehow be forgiven, especially since the enthralling lyrical nature, the haunting poetry, and the signature rhythms inherent in his dialogue were echoes of the early promise and were still present in everything Tenn wrote until the day he died.

The major problem with this play is that the characters have nowhere to go; they’re as tortured and miserable when they first hit the stage as they are in the final lamentable moments. It takes a certain amount of courage to decide to present this piece, which I don’t think anyone has in many years, and for that I applaud the producers and creative team. Unfortunately, this one is basically unable to be saved.

Now playing at the Hudson Backstage, this Tokyo Hotel is beautifully mounted and designed. The lighting and sound by Matthew Richter perfectly captures the atmosphere and the set by Joel Daavid is stunningly evocative. The performances from three well-established veteran actors (Rene Rivera as a dying famous artist, Susan Priver as his harpy of a wife, and Paul Coates as his Tenn-like art dealer) and one young man who holds his own playing off of his more seasoned costars (Remington Hoffman as the barman trying to keep Priver’s Miriam from fondling his junk), achieve everything they possibly can considering the limits of the material.

This trio of unhappy and trapped characters, again definitely based on parts of Tenn’s own bedeviled self, are as tortured and miserable at the beginning of the play as they are at the end. There is simply no character arc for any of them to grab onto and make their deadlocked journeys any easier to assay, something that not even uber-talented and inspirational director Jack Heller can overcome. Again, the problem here is not in the presentation; it’s the material they chose to tackle.

As the nymphomaniac trophy wife of the doomed painter, Priver seems to be on a mission to play all of Williams’ terminally distraught heroines. Her Blanche in Streetcar, also beautifully directed by Heller a few years back at the Odyssey, continued her Quixote-esque journey to tackle Williams’ many outrageously blowsy female alter-egos. How I would love to see her ace Flora in Milk Train or Leona in Small Craft Warnings one of these days, both characters given many more playable facets to their characters than the glaringly one-note Miriam.

It’s oddly seductive and certainly revealing to be privy to how completely Williams was able to express the deepest pain and sense of loss that was destroying his life at the time of this writing—and this flawed play remains a perfect chronicle of how one worldclass wordsmith inadvertently set out to destroy himself. Still, it’s a shame how much time, energy, talent, and financial support had to be expended to attempt to bring In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel to dubious fruition.

THROUGH May 18: Hudson Backstage Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Bl., Hollywood. www.onstage411.com/bartokyo

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