Dave Rivas and Cecilia Cuevas-Torres in "Adult Storytime: A Caregiver's Guide to the Blues."  Narrative Images Photography

            “Adult Storytime: A Caregiver’s Guide to the Blues” is a labor of love for creator/director Marti Gobel, whose interviews of caregivers, of all ages, are heard in the interviewees’ very words in this production’s 12 monologues.
            As those monologues, performed by four actors and accompanied by live blues music reveal, caregiving isn’t always a labor of love. It certainly can be, but there’s no one, universal definition of a caregiver. It may be done out of love. It may be done out of duty. It may be done because there’s no one else to do it.
            This OnWord Theatre presentation at Liberty Station’s Light Box Theater demonstrates too that caregiving isn’t necessarily desperately sad. It can be a gift. It can be uplifting in deeply human ways. It can, in moments, even be haplessly funny. There are boxes of Kleenex on the floor placed around the seats in the theater in case patrons are moved to the brink of tears by any of the monologues.
            You may not need them. While some of Gobel’s interviews yielded painful, heart-rending recollections, most do not.
            Then there’s the presence of the musicians – Gobel’s husband Jacob, the band director, on keyboards; their son Kemet on bass; Kahir Brown on drums; and a superfine guitarist with a knack for the blues, Craig Griffin. Providing vocals is Jasmine January, familiar to most local theatergoers. She may be new, as she’s said, to songs like John Lee Hooker’s “Cry Before I Go” or Bessie Smith’s “Gimme a Pig Foot and a Bottle of Beer,” but she surely has a feel for them.
            Gobel curated the set list of songs, performed in between deliveries of monologues. It also includes B.B. King’s “How Blue Can You Get?”, Ray Charles’ “You Don’t Know Me,” Etta James’ “I Sing the Blues,” among others. Gobel’s correct in that the blues doesn’t mean sad and it doesn’t mean pain. It means catharsis. It means comfort. It means letting it out and taking back in something restorative.
            On the louder of the musical numbers January’s vocals are overpowered somewhat, but mostly the musical half of “Adult Storytime” is foot-tapping and immersive.
            The monologues are delivered by Cecilia Cuevas-Torres, Wilfred Paloma, Dave Rivas and Meesha. There is no casting by gender or age. (Cuevas-Torres and Rivas, as a matter of fact, kick off the performance playing children.) Each segment is book-ended by projected photos of the caregiver and the person being cared for.
            Two of the monologues are especially personal to Gobel: one, with Rivas as her daughter Freedom, recounting the story of a Georgetown law student who had to fight for the right to care for her own child as she pursued a degree; and another with Meesha as Gobel herself, reliving Gobel’s revelatory experience caring for the poor in a South Africa township.
            Often heard or implied in the monologues is a message of “no regrets” – an affirmation from caregivers who went through a hell some of us can’t imagine – or many of us might relate to – but did so because they did care, and ultimately that was what was most important.
            Professional caregivers are also honored in some of the segments; their contributions are just as critical and worthy of respect.
            I’ve never had to be a caregiver, but I have friends and know others who have been. My understanding of and admiration for them is greater because of this production.
            “Adult Storytime: A Caregiver’s Guide to the Blues” runs through June 28 at the Light Box Theater at Liberty Station, Point Loma.

Patrick Star (Berto Fernandez, left) and SpongeBob (Bailey Lee) celebrate their friendship in "The SpongeBob Musical."                                                                                                  Karli Cadel Photography

            For cockeyed optimist SpongeBob Squarepants every day is the best day ever. So, to quote another pop-culture icon, Mad magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman, “why worry?” when a predicted volcanic eruption threatens all who reside in the undersea realm of Bikini Bottom?
            That’s it. Those are the stakes in “The SpongeBob Musical,” Kyle Yarrow’s stage adaptation, with musical production conceived by Tina Landau, of the long-loved Nickelodeon TV show. So why does it take two and a half hours to address and resolve the problem?
            Because the show, which debuted on Broadway nine years ago and is now onstage in Cygnet’s Joseph Clayes III Theater, isn’t invested solely in the problem. It’s a showcase for song-and-dancing performances by versatile actors portraying cartoon characters that kids – and many of their parents – have loved for a quarter-century.
            In between the discovery, by “outsider mammal” Sandy Cheeks (Rebecca Murillo) of the volcano-eruption danger and the quest led by SpongeBob (Bailey Lee) to negate it are prodigious production numbers that smack of pure Broadway pizazz. Both Patrick Star (Beto Fernandez) and Squidward Q. Tentacles (Andrew Oswald) get lavish, ensemble-supported turns clearly designed to bring the ‘ol house down. Because Fernandez and Oswald are clearly the two loudest cheered performers in the Cygnet cast you could say they do just that.
            Director Katie Banville, recently named the theater’s associate artistic director, is a seasoned choreographer as well. No wonder the elaborate dance sequences in “SpongeBob” are as dazzling and superbly executed as they are.
            All of the other principal characters familiar to “SpongeBob” cartoon fans (admittedly, I am not one of them) are here: Mr. Krabs (Kurt Norby), Sheldon J. Plankton (Drew Bradford) and his computer wife Karen (Emma Nossal), Larry the Lobster (Boston Antunez), Pearl Krabs (Brittany Adriana Carrillo), Mrs. Puff (Gerilyn Brault).  Cygnet’s is a cast of nearly 20 all told.
            As befitting SpongeBob, Lee is playful, effusive and animated – the character’s giddy joy and value of friendship shines through. Like all the others in the show, she’s imaginatively costumed by Kelan Yang. Not clumsy replicas of the cartoon show but more comfortable, more conducive-to-movement outfits in bursting bright colors that suggest the visual characteristics of the Bikini Bottom gang.
            Mathys Herbert’s set evokes the undersea world of SpongeBob and company with shades of blue, oscillating waves and illuminated kelp. Of course there’s a prominent pineapple, and a giant wristwatch (probably waterproof) is utilized later when the gang is up against the “deadline” for the volcano to blow. If that’s intended to add urgency to the proceedings, it really doesn’t. This is a show, hosted by the quite funny Cody Bianchi as jokester Patchy the Pirate, that takes its own sweet time for song and spectacle.
            The musical score includes original tunes by notables like Sara Bareilles, Cyndi Lauper, John Legend and David Bowie. Jonathan Coulton (lyrics) and Tom Kitt (music) contributed. It’s a likable if not remarkable collection of songs. They do the job and ably support the big production numbers.
            A definite issue is the volume in the theater. Way too loud, at times thunderous. It didn’t help either that I had a woman in back of me whose recurring “Wooooooos!” were almost as loud.
            Does “SpongeBob the Musical” need to be this loud? “American Idiot,” yes. “SpongeBob?” I think not.
            Speaking of the audience, there certainly were kids there on opening night, though most patrons were adults, many of the men in aloha shirts. A few with jackets draped over their SpongeBob T-shirts.
            So this is a stage show that has devoted fans and is likely to have them for years to come. The musical was first produced locally four years ago by Coronado Playhouse. Cygnet is closing its first season at The Joan with “The SpongeBob Musical” and it seems apt for the beginning of summer with its long, sunny days and cold pineapple.
            “The SpongeBob Musical” runs through July 12 at Cygnet Theatre in Liberty Station, Point Loma.

Ngozi Anyanwu (left) and Sullivan Jones in "The Monsters."                                 Photo by Rich Soublet II

            The two hardest working actors in town right now have to be Ngozi Anyanwu and Sullivan Jones. As proof, there’s “The Monsters,” Anyanwu’s sister/brother drama set in the arena of mixed martial arts, or MMA.
            A co-production between La Jolla Playhouse and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, “The Monsters” requires Anyanwu and Jones to not only simulate the punching, kicking, bobbing and weaving of MMA but to tirelessly demonstrate the rigorous training that goes into prepping for a fight. Tortures (to me at least) such as jumping rope, doing fast-paced push-ups and sit-ups, and using the floor like a trampoline that doesn’t move. It’s exhausting and terribly impressive to watch from the passive comfort of a seat in the Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Forum.
            Yet technically and physically precise and powerful as all that is, the MMA is secondary to the interpersonal story of Joseph (called Big throughout) and younger sister Josie (Lil) who in a mere 80 minutes of stage time evolve from tentatively reunited to the most important person in each other’s lives.
            “The Monsters” is partly autobiographical for Anyanwu, who based the character of the aging fighter Big on her own older MMA-involved brother, wanting to honor his softer, human side just as she attempts to do – quite movingly – with Big. We suspect from the outset that Big is not a monster (the appellation he’s adopted, somewhat self-deprecatingly), but he must learn that truth himself.
            With a little help from Lil.
            Anyanwu knows “The Monsters” inside and out. She not only wrote the play but directed it in its premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club and has portrayed Lil a number of times onstage. At the Playhouse Tamilla Woodard is directing a production, with choreography by Adesola Osakalumi, that feels in perpetual motion even in its quieter, more introspective moments. Some of these come in flashbacks to Big and Lil’s past, children (though there’s a 10-year age difference) of the same father but different mothers. The affection they show for each other does not hint at the long estrangement to come between them, though the domestic abuse Big endures at the cruel hand of their father and suggestions of Big’s problem with booze loom.
            I generally applaud a play of only 80 minutes in length, but I think the flashbacks could have been more substantial if not more frequent during.
            The tale opens with Lil reintroducing herself to the older brother who hasn’t seen her in a dozen years or more. In the interim she’s been following his career as a fighter, admiring him as much as wondering about him. Big is surprised and wary, though rather too quickly for my buy-in he warms to her in his inherently terse, self-protective way.
            Recognizing the passion and potential in his sister as an athlete herself, Big soon is training her to follow in his footsteps. His admittedly second-tier career (in spite of the championship belts he possesses) is on the decline and the younger Lil appears to have what it takes to possibly surpass his own achievements in the cage.
            Lil is learning far more about her brother than his technical skills along the way, just as Big recognizes in her some of the same frailties (including potential substance abuse) that he has grappled with and sought in a sense to deny.
            The development of this mutual understanding and, more so, of a sibling relationship grounded in love are what make “The Monsters” as reverberant as it is. At the same time, the physicality of the story mirrors the emotion building in each character. Fight consultant Chelsea Pace and mixed martial arts consultant Eijara Eubanks are to be lauded for what certainly looks authentic to me, though I’m far from MMA-conversant. Just as integral to the theatrical reality of the production are the sound effects designed by Daniela Hart, Noel Nichols and Bailey Trierweiler of New York-based UptownWorks. You can swear the punches thrown are landing.
            Anyanwu and Jones are in sync in both the physical and emotional worlds of “The Monsters.” Big’s internal self-realizations are the more deep-seated, requiring Jones to all but become another character entirely before the tale is told but like so many men propelled by machismo and stoicism any substantive shift in persona can seem automatically dramatic.
            Anyanwu is energy personified. Lil becomes fight-ready and assumes some of her brother’s swagger, for better or worse, but she remains herself. She may one day be the champion Big never was, but won’t leave behind her innate playfulness and probably not the oversized Philadelphia Eagles jersey stashed away in her past.
            “The Monsters” did not make me an MMA fan or even curious about those who compete in mixed martial arts. It does, however, make me thoughtful about my own sibling relationships and how, for the good of all concerned, they demand attention and love.
            “The Monsters runs through June 28 in La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Forum, UCSD campus.

May and December: Lauren Weinberg and Gregory North in "The Most Happy Fella." Photo by Aaron Rumley

            In Jeffrey B. Moss’ director’s note in the North Coast Repertory Theatre program for its production of Frank Loesser’s “The Most Happy Fella” he references the show as “everyone’s favorite musical they’ve never seen.”
            It hasn’t been produced locally in 20 years, not since Moonlight Stage Productions staged “The Most Happy Fella” in Vista. In fact, my “introduction” to this Golden Age musical was an old rerun of “I Love Lucy,” an episode from 1957 titled “Lucy Goes Out on the Town,” in which she, Ricky, Fred and Ethel went to a big Broadway show and it was – you guessed it – “The Most Happy Fella.”
            So Lucy and the gang saw it 50 years ago before I finally did.
            “The Most Happy Fella” is an old-fashioned musical, the kind that isn’t written or produced anymore. In spite of a couple of “goddamns” and an unplanned pregnancy in the narrative it’s a pretty foursquare story: Old guy -- make that old fella -- enchanted by the much younger server who waited on him in a San Francisco restaurant has left her a note that all but proposes marriage. Lo and behold, and perhaps because he’s substituted a photo of his handsome ranch foreman for his own, she turns up not long afterward at his Napa Valley grape farm. Everyone’s already calling her “the bride.”
            “The Most Happy Fella” is based on a play by Sidney Howard, “They Knew What They Wanted,” which later became a 1940 film of the same name starring Carole Lombard (as the young server) and Charles Laughton (as the aging wine grower). The movie does not have a happy ending.
            “Fella” is the third of Loesser’s Broadway musicals, premiering six years after his gangbusters hit “Guys and Dolls.” “The Most Happy Fella” is no “Guys and Dolls.” Its characters, besides Tony Esposito the grape farmer and waitress Amy, whom he has idealized as Rosabella (a device later exploited in “Man of La Mancha”), are mostly folks around the Napa ranch. Four of the hands, in fact, get to deliver “The Most Happy Fella’s” best known song, “Standing on the Corner.”
            As for the Loesser score, it’s a tuneful, serviceable one in which many of the gimmicky numbers, like the chefs’ acrobatic “Abbondanza,” the audience sing-along “Sposalizo” and the high-kickin’ ode to Dallas, Texas, “Big D,” are more memorable than the earnest ballads.
            But all this said, “The Most Happy Fella” is an entertaining 140 minutes (yeah, a little too long) of musical theater, comedy and romance, and the North Coast Rep production definitely benefits from having some unmistakably talented actors in the cast. Gregory North, playing Tony, has a big voice and is far more sympathetic than Charles Laughton was in the old movie. Tony’s loud and a little cranky but an old softie.
            If he’s cranky it’s probably because of his pushy sister Marie (Bethany Slomka in a very unsympathetic role) who’s determined not to allow a union between her brother and this young woman from San Francisco (that wicked city!).
            Lauren Weinberg, a vocal star in NC Rep’s past productions of “Camelot” and last year’s “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” is that young woman from San Francisco. I could listen to Weinberg sing all day; her voice is simply beautiful. I don’t feel like this musical gives her the best showcase, but she stands out nonetheless.
            The comic roles of Cleo, her waitress friend from The City (Shinah Hey) and Herman (Andrew Hey), the ranch hand who can’t help smiling, are more about their kissing courtship than the music, though they do have a tonna fun with “Big D.”
            I honestly didn’t know that the wistful tune “Joey, Joey, Joey” was from this show. Chris Hunter’s performance (as Joe the ranch foreman) of it is touching and sung with tremendous feeling.
            That aforementioned ensemble of folks ‘round the ranch (Jacob Caltrider, Eli Wood and Morgan Hollingsworth) truly enlivens “The Most Happy Fella” at times when it leans toward excess sentiment. Their antics and steps are choreographed by Melissa Glasgow.
            Alina Bokovikova has everyone clad in appropriate late-1920s rural duds, and in this staging of “The Most Happy Fella,” one conceived by Robert Page and approved by Loesser, the live music is provided by two pianists on either side of the stage – here, Elan McMahan and Justin Gray. This arrangement lends an intimacy to the show, which is largely sung-through anyway, and the effect is almost a concert performance of a stage musical. Nothing wrong with that in this case.
            If Loesser himself were around, I’d have two bones to pick with him: First, that he lets his characters refer to San Francisco as “Frisco.” Any San Franciscan will tell you that this is highly disrespectful. Second, if he really wanted older Tony to win the younger woman’s love and to do so unselfishly he’d have dropped his “Rosabella” infatuation and let her be the Amy she is. Maybe I’m overthinking it, but the “Rosabella” thing is almost infantilizing her and at the very least it emphasizes the difference in their ages rather than making the case that that difference doesn’t really matter if they’re in love.
            Loesser would counter with “Who’s got a Tony, a Grammy and a Pulitzer, wise guy, and what do you know about it?”
            He’d have a point.
            Well, to address director Moss’ observation about “everyone’s favorite musical they’ve never seen,” I’ll say this. Now I’ve seen “The Most Happy Fella,” and while it’s not my favorite musical it’s receiving a disarming staging at North Coast Repertory Theatre at which folks are very likely to walk out afterward happy.
            “The Most Happy Fella” runs through July 5 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach.

"Mean Girls" makes an effective transition from film to the stage.                       Karli Cadel Photography

            Who needs a Burn Book when you’ve got social media?
            The omnipresence of the latter (along with singing and dancing, of course) is the most conspicuous difference between the “Mean Girls” movie from 2004 and the musical adaptation that premiered 20 years later and which is on stage in a “fetching” production at Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista.
            While the Burn Book that the Plastics (Karen, Gretchen and Regina, the Queen Bee) used in the movie to be mean in writing toward just about anyone at North Shore High besides themselves is still a major plot point in the “Mean Girls” musical, social media snark is part of their ammo in the narrative update (like the film’s screenplay written by Tina Fey). It does make one wonder why bothering with a book that no one else can see (until later in the story) is even necessary when the “unpopular” can be blasted on SM.
            Nevertheless, the digital update to “Mean Girls” is a welcome one, whether evoked in projected emojis in texts or in a cautionary song ‘n’ dance number like “Stop.”
            What hasn’t changed from the film to the stage is the fact that the story’s mean girls, those Plastics, are still the best characters. Rachel McAdams announced her presence as a movie star playing Regina George in the movie, and Moonlight’s Regina, Madeline Walters, is the star of almost every scene she’s in.
            Carrying on the Plastics tradition of Lacey Chabert and Amanda Seyfried, Salima Gangani and Lizzy Sheck shine at Moonlight as Regina’s gullible cohorts Gretchen Wieners and Karen Smith. Gangani is gifted with by far the musical’s most poignant (and messagy) tune “What’s Wrong With Me,” while Sheck is the production’s ace comedian, whether singing (on “Sexy”) or just nailing Fey’s best lines.
            As Cady Heron, the homeschooled teen from Kenya who moves to Illinois and is thrust into the discriminating cliques of North Shore High (“Where Do You Belong?”), Erin Dubreuil is likable and a fine singer, though like Lindsay Lohan before her she’s overshadowed by all the vivid character turns around her. Besides the Plastics, there’s Jack Stoler and Cayden Alley as Janis and Damian, the two outsiders who try to help Cady find her way at North Shore (and to stick it to Regina in the process), and Tracy Lore as math teacher Mrs. Norbury, she who, having been blasted in the Burn Book, tries at the end to stem all the mean-girl infighting.
            The music (by Jeff Richmond) and lyrics (by Nell Benjamin, lately of the Old Globe’s “Huzzah!”) carry the “Mean Girls” story along with a few nuggets – the “Apex the Predator” tune that introduces Regina, the aforementioned “Stop” and “What’s Wrong With Me,” the recurring “Fearless” – though some feel only like opportunities for chorusing and high-stepping and don’t significantly move the tale forward. (The “Mean Girls” movie is 97 minutes’ long. The musical is about two and a half hours’ long.)
            Chorusing and high-stepping are staples of Moonlight productions, however, and director/choreographer John Vaughan, along with a large and nimble ensemble, ensures that “Mean Girls” is no exception.
            Tina Fey’s gotten a lot out of mileage out of “Mean Girls”: a movie, a stage musical and a 2024 film of the musical. Can a “Mean Girls” TV sitcom be one day in the offing? Somewhere out there must be an actress well-suited to step into Regina George’s high-heeled shoes.
            “Mean Girls” runs through June 20 at Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista.

Michael Amira Temple (left) and Nio Russell in "Rent."                                                     Xing Photo Studio

            Diversionary Theatre promised a production of “Rent” like you’ve never seen before.
            It’s delivered.
            Co-conceived and -directed by Sherri Eden Barber and Coleman Ray Clark, this legacy revival of Jonathan Larson’s 30-year-old rock musical is an ambitious departure from what these days are considered “traditional” stagings of the show based on Puccini’s “La Boheme.” For one, out of necessity and out of invention, Barber and Clark haven’t attempted to accommodate a large ensemble and a live band on the Diversionary stage. Necessity because it’s just not big enough. Invention because the inspired choice was made to open up the entire theater building in University Heights, indoors and outside of it, as a “stage,” utilizing live video projected in the theater to show characters in performance.
            Another conceit that is even more effective is transporting one of “Rent’s” most entertaining (and outrageous) moments, performance artist Maureen’s “Over the Moon” (complete with cow), to the theater’s downstairs cabaret and patio lobby area. She and cow are not alone either. Audience members are invited – and most are game – to head down and witness this in person. (Others may remain upstairs and watch it on the eight video screens.)
            Maureen’s gig downstairs is followed by the celebratory “La Vie Boheme,” with cast members performing in the very midst of the attending audience. The effect is what Barber and Clark intended: to make audience members not merely viewers of “Rent” but participants in it. This device is the highlight of the production and, amazingly, it only took the crowd five minutes to get back upstairs and in their seats again in time for what is usually the opening of “Rent’s” second act, the iconic, all-cast-sung “Seasons of Love.”
            Most but not all of the video shooting throughout is handled by Jonathan Sangster, who’s a fine Mark Cohen. Capturing characters on the stage itself contributes to the feeling that you’re up there with them and part of the story of this community of friends living for each other and holding fast to their freedom at the height of the AIDS crisis in mid-‘90s East Village, New York City.
            One of the most successful uses of the live video and the alternative staging is the heartfelt “Without You” duet between Roger (Gio Coppola) and Mimi (Maya Sofia Enciso). He’s in the theater, she’s outside on the stairway that leads up to it from below. The resulting effect is emphasis on their individual loneliness, isolation and the fragility of the bond between them that makes separation all but unbearable.
            Possibly as expected with a theatrical undertaking as technically complex as this one is, the live action and the video are slightly out of sync the entire time, and there are instances during the production when some actors are either drowned out by the band (sequestered out of sight) or victimized by mic issues.
            These lapses shouldn’t detract from the contributions of sound designer Kevin Antenhill, projection designer Nicholas Hussong or the others on the technical side who should be lauded for even attempting a “Rent” like this one, among them lighting designer Annelise Schultz-Salazar, props designer Anthony Garcia and costume designer Claire Peterson (outfitting Maureen alone is boldly in the spirit of “Rent’s” rebellious story).
            “Rent” also MUST be produced with a live band and Diversionary’s is a stellar one: guitarist Andrew Snyder, drummer Chris Potente, Sean Collins on bass, keyboards from Kyle Adam Blair (the associate music director to Jerrica Stone).
            There’s a reason why I’ve spent all this time on the technical merits of Diversionary’s “Rent” and am just now getting to the cast: The presentation is what makes this show. The risks taken. The big swings swung. The ability to make an “old” musical feel new again.
            I’ve seen “Rent” half a dozen times or more by now. Diversionary’s ensemble, from a strictly singing standpoint, is somewhere in the middle of those. But there are some standouts nonetheless. Leading the way is Nio Russell as Maureen’s lawyer-girlfriend Joanne with a voice both beautiful and expressive. The Maureen part is arguably the most coveted one in productions of “Rent,” even if she doesn’t appear until near the end of the first act. (Here, in order to facilitate the upstairs/downstairs transition, that happens after intermission.) I knew going in that the talented Michael Amira Temple would ace this role, and she does. She and Russell make some magic.
            Sangster and Coppola are the other well-matched pair in this production, their “What You Own” collaboration erasing any doubt.
            I was less moved by Enciso’s Mimi or Allen Lucky Weaver’s Angel but those are very demanding portrayals, physically and emotionally, and I won’t minimize them by comparison to others I’ve seen. Andre Heimos is a sensitive and understated Tom Collins, though David McBean feels underused as Benny Coffin, a consequence to some extent of the defined one-note role as the friend-turned-landlord.
            The star of any production of “Rent,” including a technically innovative one such as Diversionary’s, is always Jonathan Larson’s score – emotive, incredibly varied and nuanced, and, as seeing his show after 30 years testifies, timeless.
            The overarching message of “Rent” is timeless too: LIVE FOR THE MOMENT.
            “Rent” runs through June 28 at Diversionary Theatre in University Heights.

Left to right: Jesse J. Perez, Jason Sanchez, Martina Sola and Jonny Beauchamp in "The Hombres." Photo by Rich Soublet II

            What is a man? What makes a man? Who are the hombres?
            These are questions that ask for reflection – and answers – in Tony Meneses’ “The Hombres,” onstage in the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre.
            Worlds collide when a New Jersey construction worker, an unsettled Latino man with machismo coursing through his veins, ventures into the yoga studio next door. Hector (Martin Sola) has been summoned there after female students have reported seeing him staring into the studio. This information is conveyed gently and a bit hesitantly to him by a kind instructor, Julian (Jonny Beauchamp).
            Though Hector is defensive, it happens that there is nothing unseemly or nefarious about his peering into the studio adjacent to his workplace, and in a subsequent, voluntary visit he surprises Julian by asking if he can become a yoga student himself – in exchange, and in lieu of money, he will perform janitorial duties after hours.
            This is the beginning of more than an unusual teacher/student relationship. A friendship forms and along the way respect for and a mutual understanding of each man’s inner and outer life. Hector and Julian couldn’t be more different yet the discipline and serenity, and the sacred chakras, bring them together.
            Meneses has interwoven dichotomies throughout the fabric of “The Hombres,” the physical one being the adjoining construction site and the yoga studio, subtly integrated by the award-winning scenic designer David I. Reynoso. From the overhanging girders next door, Hector’s co-workers Pedro (Jesse J. Perez) and Beto (Jason Sanchez) wonder where he’s been disappearing to each day, and before long they’re observing changes in his behavior and his attitude. They even postulate that he’s perhaps dying.
            Not dying, but living. Living with who he is and trying, as the story evolves, to become the kind of man unlike the one who’s estranged himself from his wife and children, a man not prone to temper or violence.
            Pedro is the more curious of the two outsiders, and in a plot machination that heightens the humor of “The Hombres” considerably he interjects himself into Hector’s and Julian’s classes and becomes a student himself. Perez, boisterous and physically animated and very funny, makes for an unlikely but very likable yoga student.
            When young Beto, who’s prone to spitting down on well-dressed suits walking beneath the girders and ogling women below too, can no longer remain an outsider, “The Hombres” takes a dark turn during a scene of startling confrontation with everyone else and, revealingly, with himself.
            Where “The Hombres” goes from here is best left un-recounted. Suffice to say that those questions I posed at the outset are addressed and if not fully answered, present for deep thought. Meneses’ narrative can be forgiven for becoming preachy at its close, really when preaching wasn’t necessary, but it’s helpful to remember that as much as “The Hombres” is about gender and identity and most of all masculinity (whatever that may be), it’s about the characters who are the hombres -- what differentiates them, what defines them, and what they share.
            Sola’s performance as the searching Hector has understated power, while Beauchamp is the essential figure of the play. His is a quietly potent turn as well, utilizing movement and silent reaction too as means of portraying someone seeking his own perfect peace while aware that there is nothing, or no one, perfect.
            Meneses has added a fifth character, Miles (Robert Lenzi), a new student of Julian’s with GQ looks and flaunting flirtation to spare. That he has a wife and child on the way parallels the sexual tension he fuels between himself and Julian. I can appreciate how this subplot jibes with all that the playwright is posing about men and who they are, though little would be lost were it not in the play.
            “The Hombres” is directed by the reliable James Vasquez who honors Meneses’ story with the intimacy it merits. Sound designer Leon Rothenberg’s acoustic touches convey the contemplative aura of a yoga studio.
            In the theater on opening night, I overheard a guy sitting behind me who’d possibly been reading the program notes before the production began. “I don’t want to reconsider what my masculinity means,” he was saying with emphasis. Maybe he was kidding. But maybe he did reconsider once the performance was over, or at least think about who all the hombres are in this splintered, patriarchal and prejudice-ridden world of ours.
            “The Hombres” runs through June 21 in the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre in Balboa Park.

Left to right: mean girls Gretchen (Salima Gangani), Regina (Madeline Walter) and Karen (Lizzy Sheck).                                                                                                                          Karli Cadel Photography

                Who needs a Burn Book when you’ve got social media?
            The omnipresence of the latter (along with singing and dancing, of course) is the most conspicuous difference between the “Mean Girls” movie from 2004 and the musical adaptation that premiered 20 years later and which is on stage in a “fetching” production at Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista.
            While the Burn Book that the Plastics (Karen, Gretchen and Regina, the Queen Bee) used in the movie to be mean in writing toward just about anyone at North Shore High besides themselves is still a major plot point in the “Mean Girls” musical, social media snark is part of their ammo in the narrative update (like the film’s screenplay written by Tina Fey). It does make one wonder why bothering with a book that no one else can see (until later in the story) is even necessary when the “unpopular” can be blasted on SM.
            Nevertheless, the digital update to “Mean Girls” is a welcome one, whether evoked in projected emojis in texts or in a cautionary song ‘n’ dance number like “Stop.”
            What hasn’t changed from the film to the stage is the fact that the story’s mean girls, those Plastics, are still the best characters. Rachel McAdams announced her presence as a movie star playing Regina George in the movie, and Moonlight’s Regina, Madeline Walter, is the star of almost every scene she’s in.
            Carrying on the Plastics tradition of Lacey Chabert and Amanda Seyfried, Salima Gangani and Lizzy Sheck shine at Moonlight as Regina’s gullible cohorts Gretchen Wieners and Karen Smith. Gangani is gifted with by far the musical’s most poignant (and messagy) tune “What’s Wrong With Me?” while Smith is the production’s ace comedian, whether singing (on “Sexy”) or just nailing Fey’s best lines.
            As Cady Heron, the home-schooled teen from Kenya who moves to Illinois and is thrust into the discriminating cliques of North Shore High (“Where Do You Belong?”), Erin Dubreuil is likable and a fine singer, though like Lindsay Lohan before her she’s overshadowed by all the vivid character turns around her. Besides the Plastics, there’s Jack Stoler and Cayden Alley as Janis and Damian, the two outsiders who try to help Cady find her way at North Shore (and to stick it to Regina in the process), and Tracy Lore as math teacher Mrs. Norbury, she who, having been blasted in the Burn Book, tries at the end to stem all the mean-girl infighting.
            The music (by Jeff Richmond) and lyrics (by Nell Benjamin, lately of the Old Globe’s “Huzzah!”) carry the “Mean Girls” story along with a few nuggets – the “Apex the Predator” tune that introduces Regina, the aforementioned “Stop” and “What’s Wrong With Me,” the recurring “Fearless” – though some feel only like opportunities for chorusing and high-stepping and don’t significantly move the tale forward. (The “Mean Girls” movie is 97 minutes’ long. The musical is about two and a half hours’ long.)
            Chorusing and high-stepping are staples of Moonlight productions, however, and director/choreographer John Vaughan, along with a large and nimble ensemble, ensures that “Mean Girls” is no exception.
            Tina Fey’s gotten a lot out of mileage out of “Mean Girls”: a movie, a stage musical and a 2024 film of the musical. Can a “Mean Girls” TV sitcom be one day in the offing? Somewhere out there must be an actress well-suited to step into Regina George’s high-heeled shoes.
            “Mean Girls” runs through June 20 at Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista.

Left to right: Brandon McKnight, Ins Choi and Kelly J. Seo in "Kim's Convenience." Photo by Dahlia Katz

            Half the fun – maybe more than half the fun – of watching the sitcom “Kim’s Convenience” is the interplay between blunt and crusty store owner Appa (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) and daughter Janet (Andrea Bang), ever exasperated by her dad’s bluntness and crustiness.
            Happily, that interplay is very much intact in the play on which the Canadian TV situation comedy, which ran from 2016-2021, was based. In a touring production at the Old Globe presented by Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre Company and Adam Blanshay Productions in association with American Conservatory Theater, the Appa-Janet relationship is central to the first half of the 85-minute production. Janet’s portrayed by Kelly J. Seo, with “Kim’s Convenience” author, playwright/actor Ins Choi, as Appa.
            For Choi this is an artistic turnabout. When “Kim’s Convenience” debuted in 2011 at the Toronto Fringe, the South Korean-born Canadian Choi played the part of Appa’s estranged son, Jung. Fifteen years later, he’s aged into the role of the father whose life is his family (wife Umma and daughter Janet, son Jung having fled the household years before) and his little store in a Toronto neighborhood about to be swamped by condos and, horrors, a Walmart.
            I was aware during the years that I watched episodes of the “Kim’s Convenience” sitcom on Netflix that it was based on a play, but until opening night at the Globe I’d never seen it. I recognized in the script situations I’d first seen on TV, such as Appa railing against an illegally parked car outside his store or explaining to an aghast Janet how to recognize whether a customer was a potential “stealer” or not.
            Because the play is a completely contained narrative and not episodic, however, it does possess an arc, and it’s essentially a tale of reconciliation: Appa reconciling himself to the fact that his 30-year-old daughter is not going to take over his store when he passes and that she deserves a life of her own; and reconciling with the son long missing from the family. Not giving anything away there – we can see this coming from the first time we meet an unhappy Jung (Ryan Jinn) in a church confiding in his mother (Esther Chung).
            There’s more tenderness in the stage play, too, of the kind that families seeking and finding understanding produces. Truly, everyone in the story is someone to root for: Appa, a survivor in spite of his grouchiness and political incorrectness; wife Umma, who is strong and supportive of all; Janet, whose devotion and duty deserve liberation and love; Jung, who seems sincere and humbled by the pains of the past; and the Toronto policeman, Alex (Brandon McKnight), who falls quickly and hard for Janet.
            If there’s an issue with the play it’s that the reconciliations happen too fast. I would have preferred a two-act play with intermission and the inference of more time having passed before all seems well. Turn “Kim’s Convenience” into a television series? Oh, right, that already happened.
            Directed by Weyni Mengesha of Soulpepper Theatre, the production is nonetheless seamlessly executed and emotionally immersive. I just wanted more.
            The design team led by Joanne Yu has created a highly detailed convenience store onstage, with every quick-stop grocery item, beverage, sweepstakes ticket and even bound newspapers (this IS set in 2011, remember) bright, shiny and for sale from old Mr. Kim. You can reach out and touch the energy drinks and chips.
            Obviously, Ins Choi is the anchor of this production. Some of his finest moments even come when he’s alone in his store – making himself coffee and singing to himself at the outset, or preoccupied by thought as he marks prices on his merchandise, or looking out the window for illegally parked cars … or for the son he’s lost.
            I don’t patronize convenience stores very often, but if ever I find myself again in a family-run place like Mr. Kim’s, I’m pretty sure I’ll wonder about the folks that run it, even if just for a moment or two.
            “Kim’s Convenience” runs through June 14 at the Old Globe in Balboa Park

Left to right: Matthew Elijah Webb, Stephanie Berry, Sean Boyce Johnson, Crystal Dickinson and Andrea Agosto in "Purpose."                                                                                      Photo by Rich Soublet II

            In the lushly appointed Chicago home of the Jaspers, what stands out most is a prominent living room shrine to the Civil Rights Movement and in particular, to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. A side portrait of King, looking determinedly ahead as if seeing his Dream in the reachable distance, is a fixture behind the drama of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Purpose.” It is, at the same time, at the forefront of the many trenchant questions posed in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, among them how to navigate the aftermath of activism at its most passionate and what that looks like.
            La Jolla Playhouse could not have chosen a more important and engrossing play to launch its new season. Directed by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg (following up another estimable and perceptive turn directing August Wilson’s “Fences” at the Old Globe) and featuring a superior cast, all but one of whom onstage for the first time at the Playhouse, “Purpose” demonstrates why it has been such an honored work (Tony winner for Best Play a year ago in addition to the Pulitzer for Drama) and why it’s an important contribution to American theater.
            Jacobs-Jenkins has said he wanted to write about a Black dynastic family, something that hadn’t been done before, but also to reflect its relationship to the American conscience, the American soul. Though inspired by the family of Jesse Jackson, “Purpose” is a product of its own identity, making powerful statements about self and relationships, and able to be both relevant on a broad scale and relatable individually. The events of one snowy weekend at the home  of Rev. Solomon “Sonny” Jasper (Cornell Womack), including a sudden series of emotional explosions around a dinner table, could well mirror those in many homes where fraught or estranged family members sit down together – no matter whether a prayer precedes the meal or whatever color the family.
            In San Diego, “Purpose” arrives about a year after Jacobs-Jenkins’ previous Tony-winning drama “Appropriate” was produced at the Old Globe. (It was my personal favorite production of 2025.) Like “Appropriate,” “Purpose” is a family story but one even more layered, and while just as intense and fervent not as mean-spirited – though those mean spirits have a lot to do with “Appropriate’s” shockingly comic appeal. “Purpose” is also more internalized. In both, the family interrelationships are ever on the cusp of boiling over. In each, the play’s title might as well have been followed by a question mark, as Jacobs-Jenkins’ asks audiences to identify, define and most of all to THINK.
            The play’s Rev. Jasper is a legendary figure in the fight for civil rights, a stalwart voice of justice who marched on Selma, who knew Rosa Parks, who stood shoulder to shoulder with Dr. King and John Lewis. He is an icon now in retirement and tending to his hives of bees, yet harboring secrets and resentments that flash with ferocity when his two sons, Solomon Junior (Sean Boyce Johnson) and Nazareth (Matthew Elijah Webb) come to the house after a long time away. A celebration of the pastor’s wife, Claudine’s (Stephanie Berry) birthday is decreed by Claudine herself to be another, more significant celebration: that of Junior’s release from imprisonment.
            A disgraced state senator, Junior has served his time for embezzlement of campaign funds. In a painfully ironic twist, his wife Morgan (Crystal Dickinson) is now herself prison bound, for not paying taxes. The two were allowed to serve their respective terms consecutively in order to not leave their two children in Washington, D.C. parentless.
            Naz, meanwhile, is a nature photographer who has reluctantly abandoned his work in Ontario Canada with its countless lakes and ever-present mist to join the Jasper family from whom he long ago separated on multiple levels. A platonic friend, Aziza Houston (Andrea Agosto), has driven him all the way to Chicago during the threat of a storm, not intending to be part of the family festivities. We learn early on that Naz, who identifies as non-sexual, has agreed to provide the seed of what Aziza hopes will be a longed-for pregnancy.
            Is it any surprise that Aziza ends up occupying a chair at that explosive family table?
            Naz serves as the Fourth Wall-breaking narrator of “Purpose,” not only prefacing scenes and dramas to come but even departing from the unfolding story momentarily to explain to, contextualize for, or warn the audience. “Buckle up,” he says in one conspicuous, pre-dinnertime aside.
            Most of the time I find such a narrator a contrivance, but in “Purpose” Naz is the audience’s confidante, the one who grounds us amid the conflicts and reminds us too that we are all family in some way or another. Naz is not perfect; neither is any of us. The likable and sympathetic Webb is remarkably accessible to us and even when Naz shows himself to be imperfect (at the expense of his good friend Aziza), our connection to him and his storytelling remains strong.
            It’s a good thing we’re told to buckle up before that dinner table scene, which immediately becomes a metaphorical food fight. It starts with the first of many tensions to come between Sonny and Junior over who will say grace and how. Junior’s subsequent birthday gift to his mother – letters she’d written him while he was incarcerated now turned into a book – ramps up the father/son acrimony. Aziza, who’d been told by Naz not to talk about the sperm donation or either of their sexualities, does so – earnestly and in her mind innocently. Strike three.
            It all goes ballistic when Morgan lets the recriminations and accusations fly, for which she ultimately receives a face slap from Claudine. A threat follows.
            Dessert anyone?
            Claudine’s birthday cake goes uneaten (until, tellingly, Morgan helps herself to a slice in the night).
            All this in the first act.
            Yes, “Purpose” is lengthy – nearly three hours in toto. Its dramas-within-the-drama are complex and intertwining. But Jacobs-Jenkins has instilled enough comic dialogue and lightness amid all the fireworks to ensure the following: that there is needed catharsis; and that the behavior of the Jaspers one and all is understandable to us because we see ourselves, despite different circumstances, and we too look for lightness in the dark when we can.
            The Playhouse audience on opening night laughed so hard that some character exchanges were drowned out, or actors paused to let the laughter fade. So deft is “Purpose” in its narrative and emotive affect that it can be invested in as both Greek tragedy and sharp-honed comedy.
            Few contemporary playwrights employ the richness and breadth of language that Jacobs-Jenkins does, yet those in “Purpose” given the most to say – Solomon and Claudine – are not just speechifying. This is a subtle stroke of craft and execution, a synergy between writer, director and actors.
            Womack and Berry as the patriarch and matriarch of the Jaspers are the anchors of the production – parents in turmoil and, as the dust-ups and revelations engulf the house, compelled to reconcile themselves to difficult truths. Claudine is the fierce protector of her children and of the Jasper dynasty up and through the moments when doing so would seem to do as much damage as good. As for the pastor, a man at sea after a lifetime of righteous activism now past him, his shouting is subsumed by his own conscience over his spousal infidelity.
            Jacobs-Jenkins’ script references a crisis of purpose, and it’s this that pervades the lives and fates of each of these characters in some way.
            Johnson’s performance as the unanchored, broken brother Junior is rending, as is Dickinson’s desperate, bitter spouse Morgan.
            It’s great to see locally based actor Agosto getting her Playhouse debut as Aziza, the unaware dinner guest who is subject to all the fire and fury of the Jasper household. She brings energy and humor to the fore, and it’s easy to see why even the very private Naz might have valued their friendship, one that began during the COVID-19 lockdown.
            The Jasper home with its hardwood floors and stately staircase sweeping upward in the light of tall draperied windows behind which skies darken then brighten and snowflakes fall, was designed by Lawrence E. Moten III. It’s deceptively cozy and peaceful given how unsettled are the proceedings within it. Even with all the furnishings and strategic points of light, however, that portrait of MLK is ever-present.
            Dr. King’s courage, idealism and, yes, purpose are there, framed and frozen in another time, in the anxious and joyless Jasper domain.
            For all the Jaspers, even those who knew him, the searching will continue.
            “Purpose” runs through June 7 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Theatre on the UCSD campus.