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 Joan Marcus 

Ahmanson Theatre

The beginnings of the 65-year-old musical Once Upon a Mattress were modest indeed. First developed in a much shorter version as part of a workshop at the now-defunct Tamiment Playhouse's adult summer camp in the Poconos, it opened first off-Broadway in 1959 before transferring to Broadway later that same year.

To say that Jay Thompson, Marshall Barer, Dean Fuller, and composer Mary Rogers humorous adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s 1835 fairy tale The Princess and the Pea is a minor effort has always been a given; what made it a huge success back then was the meteoric emergence of its star in her first leading role: one previously unknown Miss Carol Burnett.

It’s impossible to imagine Mattress without someone cast as Princess Winnifred any less dynamic than Burnett, who throughout her nearly seven-decade career has always been a tough—no impossible—act to follow. Indeed in its original production, when she left the show and was replaced by The Brady Bunch’s acerbic housekeeper Ann B. Davis, the production closed after a mere eight performances.

Even in its first national tour featuring Dody Goodman and later Imogene Coca in the role, Mattress never got the same response without Burnett and proved to be a difficult sell despite the iconic Buster Keaton along for the ride as the mute King Sextimus the Silent.

I would suspect when the current incarnation of the musical began as a concert staging for New York City Center’s Encore! series with a new adaptation written by The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s multiple Emmy-winning Amy Sherman-Palladino, there wasn’t prior thought about it moving to Broadway, let alone embark on a national tour.

What primarily made it a reality was finding an actor capable of all but channeling Burnett—and that would be double-Tony-winning Broadway superstar Sutton Foster appearing as Fred. Her performance in the musical’s pivotal role, half-Burnett and half-Judy Canova, is almost singlehandedly what this revival is all about; if she hadn’t agreed to travel with the production here to the Ahmanson, I doubt if it would have been booked.

What’s the old adage about making a silk purse? In a show long relegated to being presented in high schools and community theatres, this Mattress is mighty comfy and about as slickly silken as it could be. Under the delightfully tongue-in-cheek direction of Encore's Tony-nominated Lear deBessonet and featuring some truly inspired performances in the musical’s principal roles, it somehow manages to overcome all the reasons it hasn’t received a large scale new production in over six decades.

Foster is a true triple-threat as a singer, dancer, and most of all a brilliant physical comedian. All long gawky legs, akimbo elbows, goofy expressions, and acing a majorly disheveled appearance, she gets away with things no one else could—except of course Carol Burnett herself. As another character quips, she appears to have so many teeth “it’s like you ate a piano,” something that could be (and has been) said about the original Princess Fred as well.

One purposely long and extended scene in which Foster devours an entire bowl of grapes without swallowing could also easily rival her predecessor playing Eunice Higgins or Alice Portnoy, something of which audience members seated in the first two rows and not gifted with Blue Man plastic ponchos could certainly attest.

In an inspired bit of casting, Foster is perfectly complimented by one of the Broadway stage’s other most gifted performers, Michael Urie, playing the lovably hapless Prince Dauntless. As a team who clearly enjoys working with one another, the pair makes this all fresh and winning.

Urie is especially endearing as he tries to navigate set designer David Zinn’s many onstage staircases with utmost slapstick aplomb and in a hilarious one-person “duet” with the show’s other best asset, David Patrick Kelly, who delivers a showstopping turn as Dauntless' aphonic father the King.

Ana Gasteyer is also a standout as a Margaret Dumont-esque Queen Aggravain, as is Kevin Del Aguila as the court’s resident Wizard and Daniel Breaker as the Jester who narrates the story.

What makes this work best and get the better of a dated old warehouse that was never too good in the first place is the decision to embrace its obsolescence rather than improve it. Zinn’s intentionally flat and flimsy-looking set, Andrea Hood’s primary-colored costuming, Justin Townsend’s lighting so bright it hurts, and featuring musical director Annbritt duChateau and her sprightly orchestra visible upstage behind the action, are all aspects quickly reminiscent of one of those cheesy old-fashioned TV variety specials that aired in early 1960s starring someone like Andy Williams or Dean Martin. Unlike most modern musicals relying on hydraulics and video projections rather than movable set pieces, Camelot-style royal banners are flown in from above, furniture is carried on and off by ensemble members, and a black vaudeville-style wall lowers when things need to change behind it.

Despite Sherman-Palladino’s identifiably contemporary touches, the book is basically just as old-style and Rogers’ score is just as forgettable as ever, but there are lots of tongue-in-cheek innuendos to catch, including calling out things mentioned that haven’t yet been invented, as well as topical references surely added wherever the tour lands—in this case asides about traffic on the 405 and a telling reference to one of the male dancer’s sexuality by mentioning he lives in Silverlake.

The company of comic veterans also allowed themselves a few nanoseconds of breaking up SNL-style on opening night, as when another ensemble member obviously had a hard time staying in character when Foster silenced him by raising a leg and sticking her foot over his mouth. Whether such moments are spontaneous or scripted I can’t say, but they definitely add to the fun in a production that refuses to take itself too seriously.

There are lotsa reasons to see Once Upon a Mattress while it’s stopped here. If nothing else, it’s a golden opportunity to experience the magical talent of folks such as Sutton Foster, Michael Urie, and David Patrick Kelly, worldclass performers who are becoming—no, already are—theatrical legends in their own time.

THROUGH JAN. 5: Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Av., LA. 213.628.2772 or CenterTheatreGroup.org

Photo by Ashley Erikson 

Colony Theatre

Boogedyha, ya filthy animals!

For the last 23 years, LA’s much-loved Troubadour Theater Company has kicked off the season by gifting all of us cheerless Mr. Kites with a well-needed dose of side-splitting holiday fun, delivering their annual original spoofs of traditional Crissmiss tales set to the music of popular contemporary composers. 

Since its inception in the early 1990s, the Troubies’ founder and artistic director Matt Walker has adapted and directed every one of those productions, one more delightfully ridiculous than the next. Former titles have included It’s a Stevie Wonderful Life, Little Drummer Bowie, A Christmas Carole King, The First Joel, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Rein-Doors, Die Heart, and Frosty and Snow-Manilow, so the titles should give you a clue if you’re not already a confirmed and fiercely loyal fan—as I am.

I don’t think any December I’ve been in town since 2002 has gone by that these guys didn’t lift my spirits and ward off my usual lingering case of holiday humbuggery. Walker and his willing disciples knock their performances into the stratosphere year after year, selling out every show they so inventively create. Although I have to say this time out, on opening night the first act seemed more solid and better rehearsed than the second, the show is so full of razzle-dazzle that unless you’re one of those rabid fans, you probably wouldn’t even notice. 

For a second season, following the massive success of 2023’s White (Album) Christmas, the Troubies have returned to that polar vortex in the heart of Burbank known as the Colony Theatre, setting their sights once again on the bountiful music catalog of John, Paul, Ringo, and George and showcasing their rocking five-piece Troubadourchestra led by musical director Ryan Whyman on keyboards.

Home Alone-ly Hearts Club Band spoofs the classic 1990s film that made a huge star of that precocious chipmunk Macauley Culkin (now best known as the brother of… well… you know), again reinforcing that after all these years the Troubies are still “Getting Better All the Time.”

Starring the unstoppably filter-free Walker, at age 55 sporting a recycled Sandy Duncan wig to take over the iconic role of the 6-year-old Kevin McCallister (making his rendition of “When I’m 64” all the more hilarious) and featuring Troubie co-founder Beth Kennedy, a deadringer for Catherine O’Hara herself as the kid’s forgetful mother Kate, this time out might be a tad less Christmas-centric than usual but it’s still a swell way to ring in the season. 

No Troubadour performance could ever get by without a little help from their friends, this time out featuring veteran troupe zanies Rick Battala and Philip McNiven as Kevin’s inept pair of arch-enemies Harry and Marv, Mike Sulprizio as his Lumpy Rutherford-esque bullying nemesis Buzz, and Matt McCracken as that scary snow shovel-wielding neighbor Mr. Marley—who also doubles as a department store Santa to complete his court-ordered community service hours.

Walker’s real life better half Suzanne Jolie Narbonne returns once again as Ginger to his Fred in an impressively leggy pas de deux, also sharing choreography credit with both her husband and John Paul Batista, who himself suffers a running joke as he appears in a series of small but standout supporting roles as a pizza delivery boy, a ticket agent, and a rather frightening looking showgirl.

Dolly Parton-haired Victoria Hoffman performs a festive solo audience warmup for Act Two as Kevin’s perpetually soused Aunt Leslie, impressively belting out popular (though definitely non-Beatles-oriented) Christmas songs while desperately clutching a martini adorned with an olive big enough to serve five in a glass the size of a dog cone for a Great Dane.

Batalla, who also created the show’s priceless video projections, serves up his usual barrage of improvisational quips and the (possibly) scripted inside jokes are fast and furious, as always—including surmising that Kate’s sense of approaching dread is due to worrying that she’ll be considered at fault for the sequel to Beetlejuice and Harry’s concern for how Kevin looks at him is possibly explained that perhaps the kid saw My Cousin Vinnie. Even us poor much-maligned critics are not immune, as Walker feigns shock when it’s suggested that theatre is still reviewed in Los Angeles.

One part of Troubie’s traditions remains intact here for yet another year: the annual cameo appearance of the beloved Winter Warlock, a character that has graced every one of the company’s holiday shows for the past 20 years since his/her/their (another running joke) first appearance in 2004’s Santa Claus is Coming to Motown. 

Played by Kennedy, who sweeps onstage sporting Cynthia Erivo fingernails and precariously walking on stilts hidden below a flowing white robe, he/she/they delivers a stinging string of one-liners (and praise for the actress appearing as Kate) in a voice reminiscent of Mark Rylance in Don't Look Up and immediately faces an enthusiastic clique of fans as excited as if Taylor Swift walked onstage moonlighting from her Era tour.  “You’re hopeless,” she scolds Kevin at one point, “like half the country.”

Last year, my annual TicketHolder Awards presented Kennedy with a special honor: my first ever Goddess of the Standing Ovation Award for her gloriously memorable two decades as the Troubie’s dearly loved “guest star.” As Walker noted in 2023 as Kennedy teetered onstage close to the end of the performance, if they had left out the character entirely there would be rioting in the parking lot of the Burbank Town Center.

It may be incredibly difficult to still snag tickets for Home Alone-ly Hearts Club Band but let me tell you, folks, it would be well worth the effort to try to insure yourself a special holi-“Day in the Life” in these ominous times of ours—or at least mark your calendar for next November to be the first in line to snag the Troubie’s own wonky version of the proverbial Golden Ticket.

THROUGH DEC. 22: Colony Theatre, 555 N. Third St., Burbank. 818.558.7000 or www.troubie.com

Photo by Craig Schwartz

A Noise Within

For me, the best part of Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol is that it conjures a time of year when dead people apparate to terrorize rich people in the middle of the night until they agree to pay their employees better. Now, that’s a fable for 2024 if there ever was one.

My well-documented bias against sappy stories has always stopped with this beloved holiday tale, one I’ve adored like a little kid opening presents on Christmas morning. Then again, it’s also been a troubled and confusing year for our country and the world, so this is a perfect time to remind ourselves of the true meaning of Christmas, which for me is anything but a silly and destructive fantasy about the virgin birth of a dubious savior as chronicled in a book that has done more to screw up our world than to benefit it.

I personally look at the world from the perspective of an oldtimer activist crashing headfirst into my disappointed golden years. Traditionally, A Christmas Carol is about forgiveness and redemption and reminding each of us we can change our apathetic ways despite life working so hard to make us folks near the age of Ebenezer Scrooge turn a tad curmudgeonly and basically give up on our species.

A Noise Within has been presenting Geoff Elliott’s adaptation of Dickens’ beloved Victorian novella annually since 2012 and it would be difficult for anyone to not find something to like about his clever and respectful stage adaptation, beautifully staged by Elliott and his talented wife and co-artistic director/founder of ANW Julia Rodriguez-Elliott and featuring a dynamic musical score by Robert Oriol the company first introduced a few seasons back.

Adding Oriol’s music is definitely not the only change since I first saw it presented. I also seem to remember Elliott’s script as darker and with what seemed to me to have more emphasis on the ghostly aspects of the tale than I’d ever seen delivered before, something that thrilled me greatly since Dickens’ original yarn is quite scary and often far less cheerful than usually presented. Still. the many families with children in the audience this time around makes this version more appropriate for all audience members to enjoy.

Every design aspect of this Carol has become richer and more elaborate over the years, the current ANW space providing a perfect blank canvas for Jeanine A. Ringer’s scenic ingenuity on the company’s tall and adaptable thrust stage. Ken Booth’s lighting is alternately brightly festive and moodily ominous when appropriate; Oriol’s sound design is especially eerie when the four ghosties speak; and Angela Balogh Calin’s  sometimes elegant, sometimes ragged period costuming is nothing short of sensational, particularly the dazzling fruit-covered robe and inner-structure of Anthony Adu’s towering Ghost of Christmas Present.

In an exceptionally cheery and committed ensemble, the richly voiced Riley Shanahan is a standout as Jacob Marley, as is Trisha Miller as a wedding cake-attired Ghost of Christmas Past, and Kasey Mahaffy returning in his delightfully hangdog take on poor Bob Crachit. The cherubs of this Carol are all a delight: Brooklyn Bao, Brendan Burgos, Stella Bullock, John Preston, Estella Stuart, and the adorable Aria Zhang as Tiny Tim.

Of course, what can make any mounting of Carol succeed or stab itself with that proverbial sprig of holly is the pivotal performance of whomever is cast as Ebenezer himself, a role that often sabotages an otherwise fine production as it gives any actor license to play more of a cartoon than a real person. 

This suitably magical and most festive time out, I was extremely taken with the wonderfully charming turn by Frederick Stuart, this season alternating with Elliott as humbuggy ol’ Uncle Ebbie. His is a refreshing, lovable, elfin take on the classic role, something akin to watching a modern day ever-winking Barry Fitzgerald without the accent. It’s a welcome new juicy roast Christmas goose of a performance rather than what can often come off as a lukewarm slice of overcooked ham.

This is more than ever a story for our times. Dickens wrote his novella in 1843 after a visit to London’s Field Lane Ragged School, one of several neglected orphanages where the city’s many street urchins were dumped and treated miserably. His endearing and enduring A Christmas Carol can always jolt anyone to take a second look and reconsider how to see those less fortunate around us and be more sympathetic toward their plight—unless you’re a Republican, of course.

THROUGH DEC. 24: A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena. 626.356.3100 or anoisewithin.org

Photo by Jeff Lorch

Geffen Playhouse

Samuel Beckett once wrote:

"I can't go on.

I'll go on."

Lord, how suddenly that makes sense right now.

The great wordsmith’s most famous/infamous play, Waiting for Godot, premiered in Paris in 1953, followed by its first production performed in English in the West End two years later. The groundbreaking absurdist’s “tragedy in two acts” was universally jeered and applauded simultaneously around the globe when it debuted and remained a controversial work of art until the late 1990s when a poll conducted by the British Royal National Theatre chose it as the “most significant English-language play of the 20th century.”

The dystopian, intentionally plotless Godot has always been a play many actors of varying degrees of notoriety beg to tackle and chew up almost as much as they want to Be or Not to Be. The first stars to play Beckett’s sorrowful anti-heroes were Bert Lahr as Estragon and Tom Ewell (later replaced by E.G. Marshall) as Vladimir—and the courageous Quixote-esque windmill chasers faced their share of audible jeers, disappearing audience members, and even a few rotten tomatoes thrown at them from its first performance on tour to its transfer to Broadway in 1956.

Along the way, those brave (foolhardy?) enough to give it their all have included Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin, Robin Williams and Steve Martin, Sam Waterston and Austin Pendleton, Ethan Hawke and John Leguizamo, Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart (the one I most would like to have seen), Geoffrey Rush and Mel Gibson (the one I’m happiest to have missed), as well as turns by Michael Shannon, Brian Bedford, Ben Whishaw, John Goodman, Brian Dennehy, and even Barrie Humphries sometime before he morphed into Dame Edna.

For me, the quintessential Godot came right here at the Mark Taper Forum in 2012 starring LA’s own master Beckett interpreter Alan Mandell as Estragon, Irish Beckett scholar Barry McGovern as Vladimir, James Cromwell as Pozzo, Hugo Armstrong as Lucky, and the production introduced Moises Arias of Fallout as the Boy. It was honored with five Ovation Awards, including Best Play and well-deserved recognition for Mandell and Armstrong’s indelible interpretations.

For me, that last mounting of one of the greatest contemporary works of performance art will always be the standard and even 12 years later remains to me one of the best productions of any play anywhere I have ever seen. This makes it a tough act to follow for the current revival of Godot now playing at the Geffen Playhouse, which I attended with some trepidation considering even the most judicious critics cannot always remain completely objective.

The Geffen’s Godot, meticulously reconsidered and fascinatingly interpreted by multi-award-winning director Judy Hegarty Lovett, who has helmed over 20 Beckett plays at the Gare St. Lazare Ireland, is a completely worthwhile mounting of the inimitable and often nettlesome classic. It is beautifully and characteristically designed with stark austerity and the choice of casting Aasif Mandvi and Rainn Wilson as Estragon and Vladimir was a crafty decision, instantly giving the play into an all-new visibility to many potential audience members who might not have otherwise been interested in attending.

Both actors, bolstered by their individual television notoriety, take an obvious career risk playing Beckett’s lost souls who spend two-and-a-half hours discussing whether or not to remove Estragon’s shoes (“You’re just like a man,” Vlad tells his confused fellow waiter, “blaming his boots for the faults of his feet”) and reminding each other why they are there stuck in set designer Kate Voyce’s chthonic moonscape waiting for You-Know-Who.

For me however, Mandell and McGovern will always be a tough act to follow. Even though Beckett himself was a huge aficionado of slapstick comedy and idolized the comic genius of Buster Keaton, Mandell and McGovern managed to make each moment and every utterance totally sincere and spoken with import, something these new performers struggle to convey—perhaps, it should be noted, because the performance we attended was the second of the day, something that must be a near Herculean task for any actor.

I understand playing Gogo and Didi as latterday Stan and Ollie clones is an easier choice to keep the audience’s attention and avoid those thrown tomatoes of long ago, but it also gets in the way of the message for me, that our lives on this planet are basically futile, frustrating, and with no significant purpose whatsoever. “It’s awful,” the pair lament on a repetitious verbal loop. “Nothing happens; nobody comes; nobody goes.”

As much as I enjoyed the uber-talented Mandvi and Wilson’s well-trained take on precision physical comedy, I personally longed for more of the real and genuine emotion both actors were allowed only too briefly—to the point where Wilson’s Vlad actually bonked his companion over the head with his hat and made me wonder if he wouldn’t soon be twiddling his necktie and talking about what a fine mess his friend had gotten him into.

Conor Lovett and Adam Stein each have some scene-stealing moments as the landscape’s whip-cracking squire Pozzo and his downtrodden slave Lucky brought to life only when he’s allowed to think as a party trick, and Jack McSherry (alternating with Lincoln Bonilla) delivers a sweet and suitably puppy-life pair of cameos as Godot’s clueless messenger boy.

Still, this is a truly magnificent effort and, if you never were privileged enough to see Alan Mandell and Barry McGovern interpret Sam Beckett’s most notorious characters, or have only ever read and studied Waiting for Godot in some high school or college theatre class, you owe yourself a trip to the Geffen to catch this one; it’s well worth the effort, I promise you.

And if you consider that 76 years ago the world’s most rule-defying and prophetic dramatist wrote, “We’ve lost our rights; we got rid of them,” three-quarters of a century before 77 million American citizens lost their collective minds for a second time and voted for an inept racist monster now empowered to inaugurate our nation’s descent into our own Tartarean society, its not hard to understand what a prophet Samuel Beckett was. What a shame so few listened.

THROUGH DEC. 21: Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Av., Westwood. 310.208.5454 or geffenplayhouse.org 

Photo by Lizzy 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 PEN USA and LADCC Award-winner Shem Bitterman’s inherently spooky and even sinister new play The Civil Twilight 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 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—before tentatively unpacking.

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.

I believe this play is one of the year’s most unique and hauntingly memorable, 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, who with this performance 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 tops 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 JAN. 26: 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