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 Jeff Lorch

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

[REVIEW TO COME]

Photo by Jim Cox

Hudson Backstage

I must admit if it hadn’t been for two details about the new musical It’s All Your Fault, Tyler Price!, now premiering at the Hudson Backstage, I probably would have relegated the invitation to my dreaded More Press Releases file.

First and foremost, the thing that stopped me from possibly passing over It’s All Your Fault was the creation credits. Seeing that it was co-produced, co-written, and especially directed by my longtime friend and theatrical wunderkind Kristin Hanggi was all I needed to know.

Hanggi, who came to prominence in 2000 when she gave birth to John Hartmere and the late Damon Intrabartolo's groundbreaking Bare: the Musical, also at the Hudson (and featuring a starmaking turn by my former client Jenna Leigh Green from back when I was managing kids on the side), has been a staunch New Yorker for many years since, so I knew her decision to debut her newest project back in her hometown meant it was also a special diamond-in-the-rough she wanted to nurture into something even more special.

Hanggi is the master of that—as may be even more evidenced by the fact that her also LA-spawned Rock of Ages followed the lead of Bare and moved off-Broadway from its first Hollywood Boulevard residency at King King, then shifted to Broadway, and finally went on to becoming a well-received feature film, along the way garnering its creator a Tony nomination as Best Director of a Musical in 2009.

Hanggi discovered the raw wonder of It’s All Your Fault when a friend introduced her to Emmy-winning composer Ben Decter, who played her an early version of the show’s “I Believe in Drugs.” A mere few hours after that prophetic meeting, the initial spark of the musical was born. It has since received numerous developmental workshops over the past 14 years, eventually landing here at the Hudson in this spectacularly delightful and ultimately moving incarnation clearly ready to follow in the massive footsteps of both Bare and Rock of Ages.

I must admit I initially found Decter’s score a tad underwhelming but boy, did it soon begin to grow on me. By the time the musical’s resident goofy amateur ancient alien theorist Ms. Friss (Dahlya Glick) suddenly changed horses and launched into the haunting ballad “Little Girl” near the end of Act One, I knew I was listening to music I wanted to hear again and again.

To say this is a musical that centers around a child with epilepsy and how her condition affects a family facing it would be a little like saying Next to Normal is about someone living with bipolar disorder, Fun Home deals only with the suicide of a closeted parent, or Sweeney Todd wonders why those meat pies have such a funny aftertaste.

Granted, It’s All Your Fault is based on Decter’s own experiences after his 17-month-old daughter was diagnosed with catastrophic epilepsy, but although this subject could be far more disturbing than entertaining, he and Hanggi have managed to bring both humor and a sense of true inspiration into the story, not to mention slipping in some crafty tutorials—in song—about things we all should know about dealing with the debilitating disease. Not only did the spirited production number “Stay Safe Side” make me tap my toes, it taught me how to help if ever anyone around me has a seizure.

The premise is simple and perhaps a tad formulaic, but it’s cleverly serviceable and its predictability is easily overshadowed by the charm and humor at the heart of the story. When schoolyard bully Tyler Price (Jonah Orona) employs Trump-like antics to target and make fun of the disabilities of a slow-learning fellow student with epilepsy named Lucy Hoffman (Faith Graham), her scrappy older brother Jackson (future superstar Charlie Stover) clocks him with a well-placed haymaker to the jaw that leaves him sprawling.

Although Jackson ends up facing expulsion by school principal Mrs. McKackney (Desi Dennis-Dylan), she decides he must write a statement of apology to be read publicly in front of a committee tasked with choosing his fate.

Our pint-sized hero is conflicted. Although he knew he needed to defend Lucy, Jackson also struggles mightily with having to deal with his socially awkward sister, as well as feeling ignored by his busy parents (Jenna Pastuszek and CJ Eldred) whose limited time at home is spent doting on her—especially as she insists on being bat mizvahed and grapples with learning her aliyah.

When Jackson snoops in his songwriter father’s studio late one night, he finds a binder holding a fervently conflicted musical his dad wrote dealing with many confusing issues in his life, most revolving around the difficulties of Lucy’s diagnosis. He decides instead of writing a statement of contrition, he and his loyal bestie Coco (Erin Choi) will mount and perform his dad’s musical at a school assembly.

Casting Ms. Friss and school music teacher Mr. Torres (Enrique Duenas) as his parents who know nothing about the performance, this plot device becomes the beginning of the second act. It’s a forgivable theatrical convenience, especially as conceived by Decter and Hanggi and brought to exhilarating life by his infectious compositions coupled with her kinetic staging on David Goldstein’s wonderfully whimsical  set.

Of course, none of this would work without an incredibly game and talented cast, with particularly standout turns by the Fanny Brice-esque Glick and the lovably exasperated Dennis-Dylan, and featuring an amazingly gifted group of underage overachievers.

Graham is sweet and heart-wrenching as the challenged Lucy, possessed of a lovely voice to make her work even more special, Choi is delightfully precocious as Coco, and Orona makes a perfect juvenile villain who has an eleventh-hour change of heart. It’s also not hard to imagine the show’s alternates for the siblings, Anabelle Skye Green and Jude Schwartz, who lurk behind the others in the show’s grandest production numbers, would make it more than worth returning for a visit to see their own spin on the characters.

But then, there’s one more magical ingredient that makes this all work so well. Remember at the beginning I mentioned there were two reasons It’s All Your Fault didn’t end up in my More Press Release file? Last year at about this time, I gave the multi-talented juvenile ensemble of A Christmas Story at the Ahmanson a collective special New Discovery TicketHolder Award for their work in the holiday confection.

My review also individually singled out each of the young triple-threat actors because, as I noted, they so richly deserved it. At the end of the list of names I wrote, “…and last but hardly least, the continuously scene-stealing Charlie Stover.”

As Jackson introduces his play within a play at the top of Act Two, he prophetically speculates that he knows what we (the audience) are thinking: “That Jackson is really versatile for such a young fellow.”

I couldn’t put it better—or more emphatically. Stover is not only a knockout singer, obviously a trained dancer (some impressive identifiable ballet moves sneak in here and there), he is an actor of considerable skill who can not only delight us with his contagious comedic antics but also grab our hearts and not give ‘em back until final curtain.

Still, ironic though it may be after so many years for me, prevailing over everything about this bright and promising new musical, it’s interesting to quickly recognize the consummate talents of Hanggi as her spirit and zest for life envelop every aspect about It’s All Your Fault, Tyler Price! Her personal celebration of—and faith in—the human condition is palpably displayed onstage yet again at the Hudson.

As was the case with both Bare and Rock of Ages a couple of decades ago, never on any stage will you see a more perceptibly happy and trusting group of actors obviously free to express themselves, something surely transmitted from the perpetually sunny, incredibly positive life and career path of one Kristin Hanggi.

THROUGH DEC. 15: Hudson Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Bl., Hollywood. www.onstage411.com/TylerPriceMusical 

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 DEC. 22:  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 new 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?

EXTENDED to play one Sunday a month through 2025: El Portal Monroe Forum Theatre, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., NoHo. www.elportaltheatre.com/fritzcoleman.html