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     

Skylight Theatre: CLOSED 

Photo by Brian Hashimoto 

Boston Court Performing Arts Center

In the current climate where a brash young movie star on the rise declares no one cares anymore about ballet and opera, it takes a large set of you-know-whats for an intimate theatre company struggling as most are to stay afloat to present the world premiere of an intricately cerebral and low-lying untried play about a pair of research scientists dedicated to studying cephalopods.

Then again, there’s strength in numbers and the fact that my old home-away-from-home the Boston Court joined forces with two other like-minded and dedicated theatre companies to bring Weston Gaylord’s magical Octopus’s Garden to life despite the odds might just mark, as Circle X artistic director Jen Kays mentioned to me opening night, the wave of the future.

It was Circle X that first discovered Octopus’s Garden, I believe, and approached Jessica Kubzansky of the Boston Court and Jessica Hanna of Outside In Theatre to suggest this monumentally serendipitous three-way collaboration—and it was a match made in heaven.

Simply put, the potentially easy to overlook and somewhat analytical little drama could have been a disappointing liability but by pooling their resources and unstoppable enthusiasm, this underdog of an artistic risk may just prove to be LA’s earliest candidate for production of the year.

Lars (Tim Cummings) is a typically nerdy marine biologist who has dedicated his life to studying the intelligence of octopuses, those mysterious creatures of the sea with a decentralized nervous systems, three hearts and, if he can prove his hypothesis to be true, the ability to conjure advanced thinking that could rival—if not surpass—our own.

Lars works alongside a passionate much younger clinician named Tara (Kacie Rogers), who shares his enthusiasm but is intensely frustrated by his reserved nature in trying to make discoveries about how the molluscan class brain creates thought.

Tara secretly fabricates a homemade but complex musical apparatus (hats off to prop designer Nicole Barnardini) that she lowers into the stage-length tank of Sylvia, a giant Pacific octopus Lars discovered while scuba diving and brought back to their lab to study. Sylvia is clearly an astonishingly sentient creature who quickly became the major focus of the scientists’ research.

Tara goes home but when she returns the next morning and downloads what their empyreal charge has created in her absence, everything in her world and the world of Lars instantly changes. Sylvia has composed music unlike anything ever produced, music so labyrinthine, so jarringly sublime, so unrestrained and evocative that it goes far beyond anything anyone human has ever conjured.

When Tara is forced to share Sylvia’s composition with the ever-cautious Lars, it instantly brings her usually emotionally stunted colleague to tears and, when they both subsequently try to listen to the music we all know that brings us pleasure, it sounds harsh and scratchy and weirdly discordant.

They bring in a passionate young hopeful composer-in-training (Vincent R. Williams), someone Tara met and subsequently rejected on a blind internet date. Not only does Lucas have the same reaction to Sylvia’s “music,” it destroys his dreams, finding the unearthly celestial music so inconceivably stunning that suddenly he can no longer write music himself.

It soon becomes a struggle to decide what the next step is, whether or not to share the researchers’ discovery with the world. What Sylvia has generated, they realize, has the potential to alter the entire specter of human consciousness if shared with the world, as it just might be capable of destroying what we know as human passions as drastically as it has for Lucas.

Gaylord’s almost equally indescribably transcendent tale takes us to places hard to imagine, places where passages of what might be singled out as too right-minded and scientifically esoteric instead keep us riveted and on the edge of our seats.

That’s because what Octopus’s Garden explores down deep (if that phrase doesn’t seem too oceanic) is what constitutes being human and leaves us wondering if we as a species are as truly superior to everything else in our wildly mystifying universe we pretend too often to understand.

Bottomline, however, I don’t believe there’s any way this many-sided yet gentle treatise on the misconceptions naturally inherent in our human condition could succeed without the glorious team of artists who have conspired to bring this unprecedented, rule-defying work of theatrical art to fruition.

There’s no argument that director Jessica Kubzansky is one of LA theatre’s most prolific stargazers but this time out, she surpasses everything that has come before it, delivering a hauntingly surreal work of art unlike anything offered before.

Her evocative perception of Gaylord’s unparalleled chimerical modern folk tale makes this all come together splendidly, something clearly echoed by a worldclass design team. It’s almost as though together these passionate visionaries somehow manage to astral project their eager audience into a preternatural place to experience an almost Homeric event—and in a 99-seat theatre at that. It’s as though we’re watching a contextural 3-D cinematic epic without the glasses.

Francois-Pierre Couture’s set is minimal but gorgeously spectural, the versatile Boston Court stage dominated by Sylvia’s gigantic neon-framed tank and accentuated by a collection of hanging square Japanese lantern-esque lamps to add to the abstract sense of design so jarringly juxtaposed with the reality of the researchers’ otherwise drab and antiseptic laboratory.

Karyn D. Lawrence’s lighting is equally otherworldly, as is the atmospheric sound design by Noel Nichols that occasionally feels so underwater that we should all be handed scuba equipment when entering the theatre.

It takes a trio of dynamic performers to hold their own in the grand scheme of things that conspire to bring such theatrical sorcery to life—and these three performers do so seamlessly.

Rogers is particularly powerful as the wildly passionate, sometimes overstepping Tara, delivering the production’s most arresting and richly multifaceted performance, while Williams is heartbreaking as the hotblooded young virtuoso whose hopes and dreams collapse before him.

Cummings has the difficult task of finding the sweet spot between Lars’ lifelong fervor to make important scientific breakthroughs and struggle to do so in small analytical baby steps. His one breakout monologue as he loses himself describing finding Sylvia while on a dive is nothing short of enthralling.

Still, ironically these three fine actors are limited here by their humanity, overshadowed by Octopus’s Garden’s grandly unique and omnipresent non-human performer: Sylvia herself. As brought to life by puppet designer extraordinaire Emory Royston, who also choreographs the creature’s undulating underwater ballet, Sylvia is the unexpected star of the show.

The continuous movements of the graceful replicated octopus are executed by three performers dressed all in black—Zachary Bones, Perry Daniel, and Danielle McPhaul—manipulating long poles reminiscent of classic Thai shadow puppets. Their work and the direction of Royston deserve special honors at year’s end.

And speaking of honors, how do the members of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama nominating committee find their potential candidates? As I understand it, the drama jury each year reviews scripts by American playwrights produced not only in New York but in regional theatres across the country, taking into account the particular productions from which they emerged.

If any play this year deserves consideration by the Pulitzer board, I for one wholeheartedly would nominate Weston Gaylord and his enchanting, gripping, exceptionally mesmeric Octopus’s Garden, a thought-provoking study in what constitutes being a conscious and sentient being just as worthy to be alive as we are.

EXTENDED THROUGH APR. 5: Boston Court Performing Arts Center, 70 Mentor Av., Pasadena. 626.683.6801 or BostonCourtPasadena.org

Photo by Craig Schwartz 

Antaeus Theatre

I’ve never been quite as impressed with the celebrated works of playwright Arthur Miller as I probably should be, but how hard and how obviously he hits his audience over the head with his moralistic hammer is usually problematic for me. Take the notorious Willie Loman, for instance, who whines so much in Death of a Salesman about how life has treated him that, long before he crashes his Chevy into a tree, I want to stand up and shout, “You have a loving home!” Your family dotes on you! Get over it already!”

The two immediate exceptions in the fatalistic arsenal of Miller’s plays for me are the cleverly allegorical The Crucible and his powerful 1947 masterpiece All My Sons, now being resurrected in a nearly perfect all-cylinder revival from our always rock-steady Antaeus Theatre Company.

Miller often tackles the universal themes of morality vs. what All My Sons’ everyman anti-hero Joe Keller calls “practicality,” but this time out the author leaves just a tad room for his audience to discover things for ourselves without incessant preaching as though we are in grade school learning for the first time how dastardly our world operates.

The play takes place in the wake of World War II in the comfortably arcadian suburban backyard of Joe (Bo Foxworth), a successful midwestern businessman whose company manufactures airplane parts. He and his loyal wife Kate (Tessa Auberjonois) have survived the war but only barely, as Joe’s company was accused of providing cracked cylinder heads to the U.S. Air Force which resulted in the deaths of 21 men. Although Joe spent time in prison, he was exonerated when it was revealed his partner was the culprit, not him.

Adding to their pain, the Kellers’ oldest son, also a pilot, was lost in the South Pacific five years earlier and the all but given fact that he’s gone is something his mother still vehemently refuses to accept.

True to its era, All My Sons is told in three acts and is loaded with many peripheral characters as was expected of plays at that time, something that can often make the playing of it so many years since it debuted (and won Tony Awards for Miller and original director Elia Kazan) feel unnecessarily dated. Luckily, under the leadership of director Oanh Nguyen and featuring a generally stellar cast and worldclass design elements, the creative teamwork somehow keeps it from feeling outmoded.

This is above all what makes this revival not only riveting but essential, as it clearly focuses not only on how morality can be sidetracked by the breakneck search for the American Dream, but how subtly Miller’s 80-year-old parable reflects on our country’s current situation, a time where personal greed and unbridled ambition have totally trumped (what a perfect word) almost everything that's just and virtuous.

Auberjonois is the soul of this production, her tortured wife and mother becoming a warning for us all to not to let ourselves be desensitized by what we see enveloping our country and ignore what’s right and wrong by trying to live our lives as though nothing is crashing and burning around us.

Foxworth has the most difficult task as our anti-hero Joe, written as though the guy might be the kindly family patriarch in an old Andy Hardy movie or the grandfather in a warmhearted comedy by Kaufman and Hart—that is until somewhere approaching Act Three when his dastardly wartime conduct comes to light.

The problem is, as brought to life by Foxworth, there’s something clearly missing in the first two-thirds of the playing time. His Joe is so geewillikers squeaky clean and goodhearted that what is later revealed becomes hard to believe.

As much as everyone loves good ol’ Joe Keller, right from the start the traditionally difficult role needs just a hint of the character’s dark secrets lurching below the exterior joviality, as well as a lingering fear he will be found out. Still, when Foxworth gets to the play’s devastating conclusion, he redeems himself gloriously with a compelling, exhausting, gut-wrenching performance.

Matthew Grondin is a major standout as the Keller’s surviving son Chris, someone who knows in his heart facts he’s desperately trying to starve down, and Shannon Lee Clair is outstanding as Ann, the former fiancée of his late brother and daughter of Joe’s now imprisoned business partner.

Appearing as the many peripheral supporting characters that if All My Sons was written today might not even be included, almost all of the actors are exceptional. Cherish Duke is particularly notable as the Kellers’ unhappy and bitingly cynical neighbor Sue Bayliss, Miller’s slyly comedic shadow of the “practical” and outwardly decent post-war American whose thinly veiled covetousness less tragically parallels Joe’s own unthinkable bad decisions.

Above anything, this enduring classic still has so much to say and Nguyen and the remarkable folks who keep Antaeus such a viable entity in the Los Angeles theatre scene once again could not say it much better.

It seems grievously true that our patterns of behavior as such a flawed species always cycle back and we befuddled humans continually make the same mistakes. If only people listened more often to what art and artists have to warn us about, maybe we wouldn’t currently be stuck floundering in the unshakable grasp of an out-of-control monster and his ball-less minions.

“Private revolutions always die,” Arthur Miller reminds us in All My Sons, but unless we all fight like we’ve never fought before, the epically obscene public ones we face right now might kill us all.

THROUGH MAR. 30: Antaeus Theatre Company, 110 E. Broadway, Glendale. 818.506.1983 or Antaeus.org

Photo by Jeff Lorch 

Mark Taper Forum

What a monumental achievement for artistic diversity in Los Angeles is the west coast debut of David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s Here Lies Love, the first non-replica regional production of the four-time Tony-nominated Broadway musical to be seen anywhere. With clever design adaptations to make it work in the Taper playing space and direction by Center Theatre Group’s artistic director Snehal Desai, the production features an all-Filipino cast and, as Desai proudly stated in his opening night speech, it was developed by an almost entirely AAPI creative and design team.

The ingenuity here is exposing the inhumane injustices of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos’ brutal dictatorship in the Philippines from 1965 to 1976 and managing to do so under the glittery camouflaging banner of a rousing disco-pop musical. Below the flashiness of Here Lies Love lurks a premonitory message showing how the Marcos’ bloody reign mirrors the frightening and ever-expanding dangers brought upon our own country by the corruption and pouty dysfunction dogging the obscenely aggressive administration of our current manbaby-in-chief.

Featuring the original concept and an outstanding score by one of my personal musical heroes David Byrne (who, I might add proudly, I first introduced performing with his Talking Heads to Los Angeles audiences during my tenure as talent coordinator of the Troubadour a few centuries ago), the origin of Here Lies Love is quite fascinating, based on Byrne’s obsessive research on the Marcoses.

It began as a 2010 song cycle concept album produced in a made-in-mythical-heaven collaboration with Fatboy Slim, who was instrumental in popularizing Great Britain’s “big beat” genre in the 1990s, and the title of the album was lifted from a comment made by Imelda Marcos when she first viewed the body of her husband, saying that she wanted the phrase “Here Lies Love” inscribed on her tombstone.

Byrne explained about the master plan back then:

“The story I am interested in is asking what drives a powerful person, what makes them tick. How do they make and then remake themselves? I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be great if, as this piece would be principally composed of clubby dance music, one could experience it in a club setting? Could one bring a story and a kind of theatre to the disco? Would that be possible and if so, wouldn’t that be amazing?”

The greatest risk taken in this production is the abandonment of the musical’s previous dance party setting. In New York, the entire orchestra section of the Broadway Theatre was removed to become a huge dance floor, virtually making the mezzanine the first row of traditional seating. Instead, Desai places the action in a Filipino TV studio as one of the country’s popular daytime televised variety shows replaces the New York premiere's dance-friendly nightclub surroundings.

Even with Desai’s visually glitzy staging and an ensemble featuring some knockout vocal talent and original choreography by William Carlos Angulo performed by a precision troupe of highly spirited dancers, still this reinvention of the original Broadway production barely masks one glaring weakness: a rather badly written book and confusing storyline that, without the razzle-dazzle, makes little sense as a historical timeline.

The evolution of Imelda Marcos in the show’s intermission-free 90-minute runtime from sweetly innocent farm girl to a real-life Cruella de Vil is a hard transformation to swallow. It seems here as though one incident, finding her notoriously womanizing husband (it’s said he fathered as many as 17 illegitimate children) in bed with his mistress Dovie Beams suddenly changes Imelda into the infamously hardened prima donna who, in her public quest to Make the Philippines Great Again, basically vows to take over the power while enriching and glorifying herself at the expense of her country.

Again… sound familiar?

In spite of the script’s impossibly expeditious metamorphosis of Imelda Marcos, Reanne Acasio does a remarkable job bringing the character to life despite the uphill task Byrne has left her to overcome. She is surprisingly believable as both the youthful impoverished Imelda and as the monster she becomes, doing her best throughout to smooth out the journey despite the Jekyll and Hyde-like character arc challenge she faces.

Joshua Dela Cruz is also a standout as her early boyfriend Ninoy Aquino, who leaves her in the dust to pursue political gain and later becomes a fierce adversary of her rise to power, as is Carol Angeli as her best childhood friend who, during her latterday Countess Dracula period, Imelda coldly has imprisoned after Estrella does an interview revealing the power-mad diva’s humble background.

In Desai’s altered vision, what was originally the role of the nightclub’s DJ who narrates much of the story, RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Aura Mayari becomes “Imeldaific,” a kind of alter ego shadow figure who mirrors Imelda’s extravagant lifestyle and well-documented passion for disco. Try as Mayari might—and as spectacularly as dressed by costumer Jaymee Ngernwichit—the role is oddly out of place, suffering from the lack of a convincing throughline that never pans out.

The highlight of the entire production is the eleventh-hour appearance of Joan Almedilla, the original Imelda when Byrne’s song cycle was first performed in concert at Carnegie Hall in 2007. As the grieving mother of Ninoy Aquino, who Imelda may or may not have ordered assassinated, Almedilla is astounding, delivering the musical’s most haunting balled, “Just Ask the Flowers,” over the casket of her martyrized son.

The design and creative aspects are all suitably grand, including Arnel Sanciano’s TV studio set, Marcella Barbeau’s lighting, Yee Eun Nam’s projections, and especially Ngernwichit’s incredibly colorful and evocative costuming.

Musical direction by Joe Cruz and Jennifer Lin does yeoman’s duty with the infectious and continually noteworthy score, but unfortunately one of the most conspicuous omissions hampering an otherwise well-appointed production is the music is prerecorded. The rather tinny and clearly passionless canned accompaniment considerably drags down the splendor of an otherwise lavishly appointed presentation.

Whatever its theatrical quagmires, this AAPI-spawned locally reborn reinvention of David Byrne’s passion project is a significant achievement; not only does it cleverly scrutinize and bring attention to a dastardly history of a time not long ago when an authoritarian political regime all but destroyed a country, it also pays homage to the courageous citizens of the Philippines’ homegrown People Power Revolution who bravely stood up to the madness and brought it to a stop.

This is truly an urgently important and most welcome cautionary tale that, beyond the flashes of the production’s overhead mirrored ball, its spashy costuming and choreography, and the casting of some splendid performers with praiseworthy vocal power, Here Lies Love is obviously meant to remind us as Americans of all colors and creeds that the people of our country now under seige have a duty to band together and end the insanity.

THROUGH APR. 5: Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Av., LA. 213.628.2772 or CenterTheatreGroup.org  

Photo by Ken Sawyer 

Road Theatre Company

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THROUGH MAR. 21: Road Theatre Company, 10747 Magnolia Blvd., NoHo. 818.761.8838 or RoadTheatre.org 

El Portal Theatre

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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