James Newcomb and Margot White in "Birthday Candles."                                  Photo by Aaron Rumley

            For Ernestine Ashworth, 90 years elapse in 90 minutes.
            That’s the math of Noah Haidle’s “Birthday Candles,” a sweet yet sad portrayal of one woman’s life cycle.
            Sad because Haidle’s play is a reminder that even if one lives to be over 100, as Ernestine does, life is all too short. I tried to remain upbeat during this production of “Birthday Candles” at North Coast Repertory Theatre, and there’s plenty of comedic snappiness built into the script. But ultimately it’s sobering to take in that Ernestine, played with a natural grace and dignity by Margot White, keeps having birthdays while everyone around her passes away. The recurring image of her in her kitchen, baking that year’s celebratory cake, goes from joyous to poignant to practically devastating as the decades fly by.
            Haidle has said that his idea for “Birthday Candles” stemmed from learning that the memory span of a goldfish is only three seconds’ long. A goldfish in a bowl is literally onstage the entire show as if to remind us of not so much the brevity of its memory but of life itself.
            The heaviness of “Birthday Candles’” message is lightened, at least for the first half of the play, by Ernestine’s interactions with her Grand Rapids family – husband Matt (Martin Kildare), son Billy (Matthew Grondin) and daughter Madeline (who briefly changes her name to “Athena”), played by Katie Karel. Matt’s rather a bore, Billy’s anything but affable, and “Athena’s” depressed, but ever-calm Ernestine weathers every storm.
            Unlike the others in her circle, Ernestine is a deep thinker – she longs to know her place in the universe. At the same time, she’s grounded enough to navigate all the foibles of her family. This is a delicate balance for any actor. At North Coast Rep, White makes it work, makes us see inside her, makes us give a damn about Ernestine when perhaps no one else matters.
            Almost no one else. James Newcomb, who’s grand in the part, is an endearing presence as Kenneth, the earnest if awkward neighbor who’s loved Ernestine since they were children and who never misses a birthday party, gift in arms. Kenneth will become a much more significant figure in Ernestine’s life later on, which is bound to please audiences.
            Over the years that pass, Ernestine’s birthdays are visited by an extended family, with Karel, Kildare and Emelie O’Hara playing multiple roles. Dramas and melodramas intervene, as they will during most long lives. Ernestine, the dreamer and the rock, survives.
            To its credit, “Birthday Candles,” directed by David Ellenstein, manages Ernestine’s aging without silly props or makeup. White will eventually don spectacles or walk more tentatively or speak more haltingly, but no stage tricks are employed.
            There’s a sense as the play winds toward its conclusion that everything, including Ernestine, is shrinking. Even the snappy dialogue. Getting old is serious business, folks.
            For me, White’s beautiful performance transcends the play itself, which can feel a bit soppy. Its best scene actually is its very last, but maybe that’s how it should be.
            You may leave wondering about your own place in the universe. You may leave reminded that every moment we’ve got is precious. Either way, “Birthday Candles” will have done its job.
            “Birthday Candles” runs through June 29 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach.

Vanessa Flores Cabrera in "La Llorona on the Blue Line."                          Photo courtesy of TuYo Theatre

            We’re all strangers on a train when we board the three vintage light-rail cars in which TuYo Theatre’s immersive “La Llorona on the Blue Line” is staged. Like functioning railway or trolley cars today none of the retired three comes equipped with seat belts. They should. “La Llorona” has its share of hold-on moments.
            The play comprised of three vignettes is written by Maybelle Reynoso, author of TuYo’s “Pastorela 2.0” produced five years ago. The company’s co-artistic director, Maria Patrice Amon, directs the cast of seven that performs inside the historic, 1880s-built National City Depot that’s run by the San Diego Electric Railway Association.
            The three retired cars date from different periods in San Diego rail transport history and Reynoso’s 15-to-20-minute-long vignettes are set in time accordingly: the first in 1920, the second in 1946, the third in 1982. Only 20 patrons are accommodated for each performance, owing to the limited seats aboard the trains. The actors, speaking both English and Spanish, perform in the aisles, just inches from viewers in some moments.
            Before I dive into “La Llorona,” my own experience Friday night, a chilly and misty one in National City:
            Given a “TuYo Railways” ticket and a program sheet (more on that later), I patiently waited among my fellow “passengers” in the quaint depot environs (really a hidden gem for local history buffs). After a uniformed train clerk (Arturo Medina) with a booming voice informed us that we’d be boarding soon, cast members in costume – pretty easy to distinguish from patrons – began to circulate, including a strange young woman in white and in tears.
            All aboard.
            Reynoso’s script concerns itself with, as Amon told me in an interview I did for the San Diego Union-Tribune, “gender equity and stories of women in the South Bay” and also with the La Llorona mother myth – the weeping woman/grieving mother haunted by her own tragic deeds. In the context of this play the La Llorona figure is redefined, no longer a murderess but a spectral figure exacting justice for imperiled or victimized mothers and, in one case, a potential mother-to-be.
            The frightening and beautiful La Llorona (Vanessa Flores) eerily compels passengers from car to car, flitting like some haunted butterfly. She is the omnipresence throughout the play.
            In the first car, dating from 1920, the “Bath Riots” of El Paso in which migrant Mexican women were deloused with gasoline are evoked as the complicit young Bobby (Julian Ortega Flores) is confronted by a stranger aboard the car over his crimes. As in all three vignettes, the white-clad, mask-wielding La Llorona lurks in the background – until she doesn’t.
            The narrative inside the 1946 car finds a newly pregnant girl (Tash Gomez) looking to her worldly wise older sister (Paloma Carrillo) for answers to her predicament and answers to what love and sex and sin are. The girls’ mother (Vanessa Duron) is having none of it. Again, La Llorona presides … and acts.
            The most harrowing of the three stories unfolds in the 1982 familiar red San Diego Trolley car. The scattered babbling of an intensive-care nurse (Nancy Batres) gives way to the unearthing by a fellow passenger, a mother (Duron), of a dark and unsettling secret that ultimately will send La Llorona into a frenzy. It goes down like a violent exorcism and made me wonder at the time how any patrons could bring a child along to this production – as one did the night I was there.
            When it was over, I longed for more dramatized stories. Even though I felt a little wrung out from the last vignette.
            I’ve ridden the modern-day Blue Line many times, including to and from the border, and no trip was ever like these.
            Now back to that program sheet: Turn over the printed information on cast and credits and there are two maps juxtaposed – the “Map of San Diego MTS Trolley System Now” and the “San Diego Electric Railway Map 1918.” Though the latter is kind of hard to read, it’s clear enough that mass transit was further reaching 100 years ago. One could, for example, take a light-rail train to and from the beach, or back and forth to far-flung parts from the Panama California Exposition grounds in Balboa Park. Today’s San Diego Trolley system is one that has expanded considerably since starting up in 1981, but it’s still lacking. The high price of SoCal real estate and the sheer cost of growing out has apparently limited its reach – look how long it took to get a line out to UCSD.
            But that’s a hot-button subject to be argued elsewhere and by those more knowledgeable and more invested than I.
            Let’s stick with “La Llorona on the Blue Line”” Unnerving at times but not off-putting. Thoughtful, no question. Cautionary, certainly. Mindful of the past, the present and what may lie before us, in reality and in myth.
            “La Llorona on the Blue Line” runs through June 21 at the National City Train Depot. Meanwhile, visit the National City Depot and the museum website at https://www.sdera.org/depot.php

Jenna (Lulu Lloyd) and Dr. Pomatter (Bryan Banville) become entangled in "Waitress."   Karli Cadel Photography

            Aug. 1 will mark 10 years exactly since the musical adaptation of Adrienne Shelly’s film “Waitress” made its stage debut at the American Repertory Theater located at Harvard University. This likable grownup musical with a book by Jessie Nelson and music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles would later run nearly four years on Broadway.
            Wednesday night in the drizzle at Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista made it twice that I’ve seen “Waitress.” My first was seven years ago when the show came to the San Diego Civic Theatre as part of a national tour. As with a tasty slice o’ pie, it’s nice to have seconds.
            Ah yes, pie. You’ll want some by the time “Waitress” is over.
            There’s a connective thread between that 2018 touring presentation of “Waitress” and this one from Moonlight Stage Productions, and it’s a lulu. Musical theater performer Lulu Lloyd, a San Diegan who graduated from La Jolla High, starred as waitress/pie-baker Jenna Hunterson on that national tour (though not on the leg that stopped at the Civic). Five years after stepping aside from acting to have a family, Lloyd returns to the stage to star again as Jenna at Moonlight.
            You can see and hear that Lloyd knows this show inside and out. She’s the light and the strength of an altogether splendid cast in Vista. Welcome back, Lulu.
            Seeing “Waitress” again reminded me of the breadth and the versatility of Bareilles’ songwriting. The musical highlights two of her most touching and beautiful songs, “A Soft Place to Land” and “She Used to be Mine,” both admirably performed by Lloyd to the accompaniment of Moonlight’s “Waitress” orchestra (Stella Belauskas, Marc Encabo, Dave Fung, Michelle Gray, Robert Johnson, Don Kuhli and Josh Vasquez).
            At the same time, Bareilles flashed her gift for clever lyrics that heighten sight-gag- romps given to Jenna’s fellow waitress Dawn (“When He Sees Me”) and Dawn’s comical but sincere suitor Ogie (“Never Ever Getting Rid of Me” and “I Love You Like a Table”). Emma Nossal and Jonathan Sangster have a ball with these at Moonlight.
            The little grace notes of Bareilles’ score (like the echoey, recurring “sugar, butter, flour” that precedes the opening number “What’s Inside” and is heard most tenderly in “A Soft Place to Land”) lend this show nuance, and to an extent all of her songs for Jenna illuminate the reality that this waitress/pie baker’s life is really complicated while reassuring us that she’ll figure it out.
            Make that quite complicated. Before you can say “Order up!” Jenna’s queasy at the diner and her knowing co-workers Becky (Elizabeth Adabale) and Dawn (Nossal) are goading her to pee on a stick. Predictably, she’s preggers, and by her loser husband Earl (Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper, like Nossal playing against their usual types and succeeding).
            A reluctant trip to the gynecologist’s finds her regular doc gone and a handsome but awkward Dr. Pomatter (Bryce Banville, dependably good) attending to her instead. By the end of the first act, they are more than doctor and patient (“Bad Idea” – that’s the song title, and the truth).
            Mix in Jenna’s dream of winning a piemaking contest, the $20,000 that goes with it and the chance to dump Earl’s sorry butt in the process and “Waitress” finds its heroine in a whirl.
            Meanwhile, a lot of laughter is mined with wallflower Dawn’s courtship by Ogie, a slapsticky break from Jenna’s angst and forbidden romance. (Did I mention that Dr. Pomatter is married, too?)
            Now to Act 2. The first 10 minutes or so find everyone in heat. Jenna and her doctor are getting physical. So are Dawn and Ogie. So is Becky and Cal (Dallas McLaughlin), previously just the grouchy boss at Joe’s Pie Diner. This sequence is why Moonlight labels “Waitress” PG-13. It’s also why for many this show is so popular. Adults doing adult things. Leave the kids at home.
            The trio of director Noelle Marion, musical director Tamara Paige and choreographer Katie Banville ensure that this musical is in good hands, and it’s awesome to have female artists in charge of a story in which a woman finds her strength and finds herself.
            “Waitress” tidies everything up at the end, as you might figure, though Jenna’s romantic fling doesn’t go the way of cliché. Just as Adrienne Shelly wrote it years ago. Tragically (you can research the details yourself) she never lived long enough to see her film become a musical that likely will be produced and produced for years to come.
            During Wednesday night’s performance, I overheard one patron, possibly expecting a rerun of the old “Alice” sitcom, mutter to another patron: “Well, that was different.” I don’t think it was a compliment.
            But she was right. “Waitress” IS different, and from me that’s a compliment.
            “Waitress” runs through June 21 at Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista. (Bring a blanket.)

Left to right: Cree, Nico Greetham, Benito Martinez and Angelique Cabral in "One of the Good Ones." Photo by Rich Soublet II

            Its impressive cast of Oscar winners (Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier) wasn’t enough to prevent 1967’s “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” from being a grim, even turgid 108 minutes on screen. So props to television writer Gloria Calderon Kellett (“One Day at a Time”) for taking essentially the same premise – a pampered, only-child daughter brings home a surprise paramour to meet the parents – and wringing loads of laughter from it.
             Calderon Kellett’s “One of the Good Ones” requires only 86 minutes of our attention, but every minute of her first full-length play counts. In fact, there so many twists, turns and shocks in this onstage affair that it’s like Calderon Kellett compressed a six-episode sitcom into just one. This expands the bounds of believability to a certain extent as one surprise is quickly trumped by another.
            Naturally the primary surprise in this comedy at the Old Globe is self-proclaimed Latine daughter Yoli (Cree) introducing her “serious boyfriend" Marcos to her folks (Benito Martinez as Enrique and Angelique Cabral as Ilana, both of them slow- and sometimes fast-burn hilarious). The name Marcos is deceptive. Though born in Mexico and fully fluent in Spanish, the America-raised young man (Nico Greetham) looks very white. If that sounds uncomfortable to read or say, it’s very much in line with what identity and racial dynamics Calderon Kellett is exploring within the play’s comic situations.
            Just to recap (that’s a line that Enrique uses several times during the action when he’s trying to get a grasp on whatever revelation has shaken the proceedings): He is of Cuban heritage, born in America. Spanish speaking. Wife Ilana is of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage, born in America. Speaks no Spanish to speak of. (Opening fun is had with her over-trying to communicate with the man delivering flowers for the festive evening, awkwardly offering him “agua,” for example.) Daughter Yoli is a recent college grad, born in America, not only Spanish speaking but righteously championing every enlightened plank in the book and challenging her parents to get with it.
            Then there’s Marcos, who arrives at the Pasadena house (gorgeous set by Takeshi Kata, by the by) with a bottle of wine and … a pinata. That gives you an idea of his earnest if wildly misguided strategy for winning over his true love’s folks. The pinata will become the show’s sixth “cast member,” but you’ll learn how for yourself in an audience. (The production runs for three more weeks.)
            Calderon Kellett’s characters are overdrawn to suit high comedy, though both Martinez’s Enrique and Cabral’s Ilana have enough real-world relatability and humanity for us to enjoy them, to sympathize with them, to recognize and understand their flaws as well as their good parental intentions. Greetham’s Marcos is all over the place and difficult to get a handle on – at some points, he’s insufferably buzzwordy and clueless, at others sincerely, almost likably attempting to please everyone.
            No dis to the single-named Cree as an actor, but her Yoli may be the most grating character I’ve seen onstage so far this year. Her preachiness is one thing. Her self-absorption, to the extent of even hanging her beloved Marcos out to dry, makes her nearly impossible to care about.
            Calderon Kellett is an experienced pro with snappy comedy dialogue (besides “One Day at a Time,” “How I Met Your Mother,” “Jane the Virgin,” “Dead to Me,” et al) and as a colleague of the late, great Norman Lear she’s well attuned to writing the sort of story “One of the Good Ones” strives to tell. Combine that with an excellent director, Kimberly Senior (La Jolla Playhouse’s notable “The Who and the What” in 2014), and this production bounces along with nary a dead spot as one “I-can’t-believe-he(she)-said that!” moment follows on another.
            The presence of Martinez and Cabral gifts Calderon Kellett’s play with the charm and comic timing required of parents characters who are navigating (that’s one of Yoli’s words – sorry) generational, cultural and racial identity issues at the same time that they’re trying to support the daughter they truly love. Like Marcos, Enrique and Ilana can mis-speak, and like most parents do, they tend to over-react, but they’re two of the good ones.
            So are Martinez and Cabral.
            “One of the good Ones” runs through June 22 at the Old Globe in Balboa Park.

Nick Fradiani in "The Neil Diamond Musical A Beautiful Noise."                            Photo by Jeremy Daniel

            I can’t help it. Every time I think of Neil Diamond I remember the sight of him in sunglasses, a wide-lapel sport jacket and a bright red shirt standing onstage at San Francisco’s Winterland among rock-culture luminaries Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and members of The Band. Diamond looks, in Martin Scorsese’s 1978 concert documentary “The Last Waltz,” as out of place as a lounge singer at Woodstock.
            So I’ve always thought of Neil Diamond, as prolific a songwriter as he is, and as undeniably popular as he was for decades, as a square.
            The “Last Waltz” incongruity is not Diamond’s fault. Having put out a record, titled “Beautiful Noise” produced by Robbie Robertson of The Band, Diamond was there at Robertson’s invitation, though anecdotally some others in the storied group, like drummer Levon Helm, weren’t happy about it.
            I know I’m in the minority among pop music lovers, but for me too many of Diamond’s songs are lightweight, easy-listening “hits,” and I often find his mannered vocalizing annoying.
            Here’s where true irony has crept in: The Broadway-vetted jukebox musical now on national tour draws its name from Diamond’s 1976 “Beautiful Noise” album, and when that was released I, for the first time, found myself really appreciating the guy’s songwriting. The record included the celebratory title song, as well as the estimable “If You Know What I Mean,” “Lady-Oh” and “Dry Your Eyes,” which Diamond performed in his “Last Waltz” cameo.
            “The Neil Diamond Musical A Beautiful Noise” begins with that aforementioned title track but boasts none of those others. Predictably, it’s populated with the big hits from earlier in Diamond’s career that have made him a pop-music icon. They’re all here: “Holly Holy,” “Cracklin’ Rosie,” “America,” “Song Sung Blue,” “I Am … I Said,” “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show,” the inevitable sing-along “Sweet Caroline” and more.
            So this show is a treasure chest for diehard Neil Diamond fans who’ll get everything they wanted … except the real, live Neil Diamond onstage. (He’s 84 now, with Parkinson’s disease, and no longer performing.)
            However, and this is a big however, the musical stars former “American Idol” winner Nick Fradiani, and he’s just about perfect. His vocals not only sound like Neil Diamond’s but so does his phrasing, yet he soars beyond some tribute-show impersonation. If you close your eyes that could be Neil Diamond up there.
            In Anthony McCarten’s book for this show, there are two Neil Diamonds. The narrative arc is framed by a shrink session between the older, retired Neil (played with some measure of ornery weariness by Robert Westenberg) and the psychotherapist he’s reluctantly sharing with Lisa Renee Pitts). By way of a useful prop – a hefty volume containing all of Diamond’s musical compositions – the therapy device facilitates a trip through the pop-star-patient’s past.
            It begins with the Brooklyn-born novice with a guitar and a pregnant wife (Tiffany Tatreau) dreaming of getting into the music business. His first big break is a solo gig at the storied Bitter End coffeehouse. It’s here that Fradiani, playing his own acoustic ax, performs my all-time-favorite Neil Diamond song, “Solitary Man.”
            Before long, the young Neil has earned his way into the Brill Building stable of pop songwriters and, like so many of them at the time, found himself writing eventual hits for others, like “I’m A Believer,” a smash for the Monkees. As the story goes on, young Neil also forsakes Wife No. 1 for the sexy Marcia Murphey (Hannah Jewel Kohn), who becomes Wife No. 2.
            I knew of Diamond’s Brill Building hits and frustrations and his earliest solo breakthroughs, such as “Kentucky Woman.” I didn’t know about his making a deal with the mob to back him, dramatized in this show by Bang Records’ shady Bert Berns (Michael Accardo) and Tommy O’Rourke (Tuck Mulligan).
            Diamond is challenged by these two: If he wants to escape his contract (which limits his writing deeper, more personal songs), he must make a multi-hit album that will line their pockets further. After an introspective sequence set in Memphis, Diamond comes up with what will be the most memorable hit of his career – “Sweet Caroline.” Act One climaxes with Fradiani joyously belting it out and the approving Civic Theatre audience practically in a frenzy.
            On the subject of frenzy, I’ve got to say that the choreography (by Steven Hoggett) that accompanies Fradiani’s performances of Neil Diamond songs is among the most shuddering I’ve seen in a long while. An ensemble of dancers, usually clad in ridiculous ‘60s-looking outfits, are employed to frug behind him in number after number, bringing to mind an old episode of “Shindig” or “Hullabaloo.” I understand that without a live band onstage behind Fradiani he otherwise would be awkwardly by his lonesome during the show’s rousing numbers, but these frugging people are distracting and add nothing but period silliness to the performances.
            The costumes Fradiani dons throughout his Neil Diamond career (designed by Emilio Sosa), on the other hand, are terrific, as are Kohn’s many, many outfits.
            Act 2 brings the sort of complications that typically emerge in bio-musicals like this one, prominent among them the consequences of Diamond’s heavy touring schedule on his marriage to Wife No. 2. Just as the deteriorating of his union with Wife No. 1 enabled the inclusion of “Love on the Rocks,” the second failing marriage culminated with Fradiani and Kohn duetting on “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.”
            The strength of Act 2, which outshines the exposition-heavy first act, is the presence of a live band situated above the stage. Besides providing more of a concert feel to the proceedings, the musicians are entertaining to watch – especially drummer Morgan Parker, her arms flailing and blonde hair flying. She’s like a female Dave Grohl from that famous “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video.
            There is, though, a definite dud in the second act: To portray that Marsha desires her touring husband’s presence more than the trinkets he gives her, Kohn is tasked with performing a “Forever in Blue Jeans” that is cringe-worthy. This is where the show’s choreography is at its most ludicrous, and fact is, the sequence is completely at odds with the tone and presentation of the production.
            “The Neil Diamond Musical” recovers. A revealing one-on-one between the “now Neil” and his therapist precipitates a life-affirming “I Am … I Said” that is quite touching. It also could be representative of the real Neil Diamond who, love him or take-him-or-leave-him, seems to have been always true to himself.
            That’s worthy of respect. Including mine.
            “The Neil Diamond Musical A Beautiful Noise” runs through June 1 at the Civic Theatre, downtown.
            Note: Make sure to read the “Letter from Neil” in your Playbill program. He’s candid and grateful and enlightening.

Michael Amira Temple in "Merry Me."                                                              Photo by Talon Reed Cooper

            From the very first moments of “Merry Me,” when its beguiling narrator (Michael Amira Temple) introduces the characters, it’s clear that everyone involved knows that they’re putting on a show and that its interludes of commentary aside, it shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
            That’s the attitude audiences should adopt with this Hansol Jung romp, now onstage at Diversionary Theatre in University Heights.
            Though it’s been referred to, and often advertised in the two years it’s been around, as a “lesbian sex comedy,” that’s pretty reductive. It’s true Jung is anything but subtle with the one-act play’s foreplay, fiveplay and sixplay, but her “Merry Me” script is informed by a slew of literary, historical and pop-culture references.
            For starters, just as Restoration playwright William Wycherley’s “The Country Wife” imagined a man, Harry Horner, who feigned impotence in order to have sex with married women, Jung’s lesbian Lt. Shane Horne (Winnie Beasley) enlists the help of her psychiatrist (Andrea Agosto) in letting everyone at the wartime island Navy base on which they’re stationed believe that she has undergone conversion therapy. This as a means of getting her “merries” – the play’s code word for orgasms.
            Jung has also borrowed from Greek mythology, assigning supporting characters on the basecamp thusly: commanding officer Gen. Aga Memnon (Troy Tinker-Elliot), his wife Clytemnestra Memnon (Jacquelyn Ritz), their son Willy Memnon (Coleman Ray Clark) and his wife Sappho Memnon (Mak Shealy).
            That’s not all. Horne uses a volume of Shakespeare in an attempt to, well, get off. The omniscient narrator turns into The Angel from Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.” Even the Marvel “Avengers” movies find their way into the storytelling.
            Full disclosure: I knew about all of these references before I saw “Merry Me” on opening night at Diversionary, but you know what? The Kushner Angel aside, I was never thinking about the Greek mythology nods and very little of the other Easter eggs.
            Maybe the script’s too clever for its own good; as a very sexy, pretty graphic 90-minute farce where practically anything goes, “Merry Me” doesn’t need Greek mythology or The Bard at all.
            Director Vanessa Stalling lets her actors play, and do they ever. They’re all going full throttle most of the time, though only Clark’s nerdy (glasses – dead giveaway!) Willy Memnon comes off like a cartoon character. Tinker-Elliot’s general is close, but he has less to do.
            There are interweaving narratives in the midst of all the physical comedy – there’s a war going on; the basecamp is blacked out; Shane can’t keep up her ruse after she meets Sappho in drag, which leaves Willy and Mrs. Memnon (who had a thing with Shane) in both turmoil and frustration; meanwhile, shrink Jess O’Nope has been merried (47 times we’re told) by the Angel and is afterward given the task of wiping out “half the population” with an ax. That would be the “cis-gendered male species of European descent.” Uh, starting with axing Willy Memnon.
            The talented Agosto manages to make this complication seem somehow grounded in reality. Hers is the most human portrayal in the show.
            But it’s Temple who gets the last bow afterward, and for excellent reason. She’s not only the heart of “Merry Me” but owns every scene she’s in, and that’s most of the play. It’s a nuanced performance that is the height of fun to watch.
            It’s easy to get lost in the “Merry Me” tale, but I don’t know that it matters. Certainly the play has some weightier points to make, though they’re swamped by the madcap goings-on.
            This production to some extent brings to mind Diversionary’s zany “TL;DR: Thelma Louise; Dyke Remix” from last year, at least in spirit. “Merry Me” is a more satisfying show and more creative.
            “Merry Me” runs through June 8 at Diversionary Theatre in University Heights.
            • Important coda: In a story I did last year for the San Diego Union-Tribune about then-newly installed Diversionary Artistic Director Sherri Eden Barber, I wrote that Barber was the theater’s first female artistic director. She is not. Gail Feldman was the first. I apologize to her for the error.

Michael Amira Temple in "Merry Me."                                                              Photo by Talon Reed Cooper

Tiffany Renee Johnson (foreground) and Claudia Logan (to her left) in "Jaja's African Hair Braiding." Photo by Rich Soublet II

            With its warmth, wit and wonderful characters, Ghanaian American playwright Jocelyn Bioh’s “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” would make a promising, perhaps even enduring series on a streaming network like Hulu or Apple TV.
            But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For now, Bioh’s comedic play about West African immigrants working at a Harlem hair salon is in the midst of a co-production regional tour following its limited but well received run on Broadway in 2023. (“Jaja’s” earned six Tony nominations and won two.) Already staged at Berkeley Rep, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre and D.C.’s Arena Stage, “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” opened Thursday night at La Jolla Playhouse and will bow in the fall from L.A.’s Center Theatre Group at the Mark Taper Forum.
            “Jaja’s” is the opening production of the Playhouse’s 42nd season. Considering both the collective need to laugh during the frightening climate forged by the current administration and the urgency of countering its anti-immigrant machinations, this play couldn’t arrive at a better time. It’s celebratory of those willing to sacrifice all to be in America but also cautionary about the consequences forced upon so many of them.
            The 90-minute play covers a day in the life of the titular Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, though it’s not just any day. Senegalese owner/boss Jaja (Victoire Charles) is away from the salon, for a good reason  -- though her daughter and the shop’s employees don’t think so: She’s getting married that day to Steven, a white man, and in doing so will win her green card. (Jaja doesn’t appear onstage until later in the going, but when she does, dressed to the nines for the wedding, what an entrance!)
            In charge of Jaja’s for the day is her daughter Marie (Jordan Rice), a recent high school graduate who dreams of being a writer. Her mother’s dream is for her to go to a prestigious university and become something like a doctor. Young though she may be, Marie is tending to the braiding salon with calm and common sense.
            That’s not always easy. She’s surrounded by big personalities, the Jaja’s braiders who keep the business humming. Bea (Claudia Logan), from Ghana, had counted on being Jaja’s partner in the biz, if not operator of her own salon. As such, she’s testy and can be fiery too, like when she discovers that the shop newbie, Nigerian Ndidi (Aisha Sougou), has, in Bea’s suspicious mind, pilfered one of her regular customers. Bea’s ever on the verge of a blow-up.
            She also tangles at one point with Aminata (Tiffany Renee Johnson), from Senegal, who’s just as passionate and who doesn’t appreciate being judged out loud for her marriage to a charming no-good (Onye Eme-Akwari, in one of four roles).
            The “quiet one,” Miriam (Bisserat Tseggai) , turns out to be the most forthcoming, demonstrated in the ardent telling of a story to a journalist client (Mia Ellis) about her forbidden romance back home in Sierra Leone … and where it led.
            The back-and-forths with each other and with the eccentric parade of clients and vendors who pass in and out of Jaja’s during the day is lively paced by director Whitney White and super-charged by these top-performing actors. It’s just so much fun to watch and listen to them sparring, bantering and sharing. Bioh has said that she was inspired by her own visits over the years to New York braiding shops. It was in them that she picked up on conversations, got to know persons and personalities, and appreciated in them the hard work, devotion to craft and embrace of the so-called American Dream.
            Almost immediately after Jaja’s brief appearance and departure for the green card wedding, the story is rocked, as is Marie’s world, by what happens offstage and away from the salon. Will these remarkable women put their minor differences aside, come together, support each other?
            What do you think?
            Bioh has drawn with richness and forethought characters distinctive enough to stand out even in the brevity of a one-act play; their individualities are expressed and made fully believable by this ensemble cast.
            The braiding, too, is just as believable, with the women at their stations, clients in chairs, seeming to produce beautiful cornrows or micro braids and box braids before our eyes.
            David Zinn’s scenic design with its splashes of bold colors, shelves of hair products, overhanging TV sets and reminders of Jaja’s multicultural identity is as much playground as workplace, and for all these women a second home.
            Plaudits too for Dede Ayite’s costume design, Nikiya Mathis’ wigs and hair design, and Jiyoun Chang’s just-right lighting.
            Both Zinn and Ayite took home Tonys for their work on the “Jaja’s” Broadway production.
            Now. Back to the future. Is there enough in “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” the play’s climactic drama notwithstanding, to sustain an ongoing series in another medium? Who knows? But weekly or binge-worthy visits with these women, their clients and their friends would be a welcome addition to streaming world and a long-overdue showcase for the deeply rooted cultural identity of West African nations and their people.
            “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” runs through June 15 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Theatre, UCSD campus.

Kate Rose Reynolds in "The Counter."                                                       Photo courtesy of Moxie Theatre

            Meghan Kennedy’s “The Counter” is a little play – 75 minutes’ long, a cast of 2 … well, 2.5 – that serves up a big question: What makes life worth living?
            For Paul, the first customer every morning at the Main Street Diner located somewhere in a nothing-ever-happens town in Upstate New York, the question is moot. A retired firefighter beaten down by loss and grief and mired in ennui, life for him is without surprises and, though he's healthy and affable enough, he’s ready to die.
            The problem for Katie, who presides at the diner, robotically  brewing and pouring coffee each day, is that Paul wants her to help him end it all.
            This would seem at once too much and not enough conflict for a play of this brevity, but somehow the timing’s just right. Credit for that goes to Kennedy of course but also to Moxie Theatre, which is staging “The Counter” (and doing so after having late in the game postponed producing Mara Nelson-Greenberg’s “Do You Feel Anger?”) A primarily two-hander with one character seated 90 percent of the time can for audiences feel like slow going. But director Desiree Clarke Miller clearly appreciates the rhythm of this story, a narrative that should feel at its basics like a quiet morning routine re-enacted time after time.
            Clarke Miller also has two pro’s to work with: Kate Rose Reynolds plays Katie, the woman behind the counter, with all the world weariness and disillusionment (and more, as we learn later) requisite of someone going through the motions at a nowhere diner; and Mark Stevens playing customer Paul, so seemingly normal that his fatalistic request feels as casual as asking for a refill.
           Kara Tuckfield arrives late in the going as Dr. Peg Bradley, a married local with whom Paul surprisingly has had a fling, but – no fault of the actor – this cameo could have been confined to exposition. It’s as if playwright Kennedy decided “Hmm. Maybe I need to bring in one more character.”
            There’s also an unseen “character” in “The Counter”: the recorded voice of Gil (provided by Alex Guzman), a “friend” of Katie’s from the town she fled who’s left a whopping 27 voicemails on her phone. Talk about somebody carrying a torch.
            The fact of those unlistened-to voice messages is revealed once Paul takes his and Katie’s strictly-business relationship to the next level: He suggests they trade secrets, something friends might do. His is a corker: He desires to die and wants her to poison him by dropping something lethal, on any given morning that she chooses to do so, into his cuppa joe.
            This is where “The Counter” premise-wise ventures into “Twilight Zone” territory, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What grounds it in genuine human interaction moving forward is Reynolds’ thoughtful performance. In her hands, Katie becomes more and more a wholly complex woman, a lonely soul who has been secreting regrets and what-if’s as well as the emotional scars of something far more personally intrusive than a busted relationship with the unseen Gil.
            The scene where after a quarrel one morning Paul doesn’t show up as usual and Katie is left to wonder, even fear whether he is still alive is as wrenching as anything in the play. Without a word Reynolds shows Katie’s dread, anxiety and despair. Her hunching over the counter seemingly unable to move conveys it all.
            Stevens’ role does not call for as much layering, though he’s certainly believable as Paul, a good man who’s kind of given up.
            When it looks as though Katie and Paul have finally agreed that they’re actual friends – you knew a hug was coming – that’s believable enough as well.
            The poison-me device, though, is more credible to me than is Katie’s ultimate decision re: the Gil we don’t even know (and I’m not sure if she truly knows him either). But people do funny things, whether they’re in love, in like, or something in between.
            The Main Street Diner crafted by scenic designer Julie Lorenz is just as cozy and corny as you’d expect in a little town on freezing mornings. There’s much attention to detail: the chalkboard scribble touting the breakfast special; the storefronts of the quaint town street visible through the window; the old coat rack where Paul hangs his jacket each morn.
            The appeal of the neighborhood diner isn’t so much lost on me as foreign to me. I’m a big-city boy so I don’t have a lot of experience with such places. But in spite of the interpersonal drama going on at the one in “The Counter,” I could see myself popping in if it was chilly out and I craved a hot cup and a donut.
            Make mine with milk, please, and hold the sugar.
            “The Counter” runs through June 1 at Moxie Theatre in Rolando.

Left to right: Supriya Ganesh (seated), Tommy Bo, Mahira Kakkar and Deven Kolluri in "House of India." Photo by Jim Cox

            Whenever I observe that a family restaurant has closed, I feel a tinge of sadness, an empathy for someone’s blood, sweat and tears dissolved. It’s worse if it’s a place I’d frequented.
            From such circumstances came San Diego playwright Deepak Kumar’s “House of India,” and for him it was even more personal. House of India was a restaurant he and his family frequented when he was growing up in Michigan. It was a place, he has said, to connect with his community, his culture and with the cuisine of his heritage.
            In writing the one-act “House of India,” which is making its world premiere at the Old Globe in the round, Kumar moved that Michigan restaurant south to Ohio, integrated dishes and recipes taught to him by his mother, and imagined an Indian family bravely holding on while their business falters.
            Directed by Zi Alikhan, “House of India” is an endearing, well-crafted dramedy heightened by a sincere, star performance from Mahira Kakkar as the estimable family matriarch.
            Situated in a strip mall in Akron, Ohio (until this play familiar to me only for Firestone Tires and the quirky band DEVO), little House of India is enjoying fewer and fewer customers. The dream of an Indian immigrant who has passed away, the restaurant is now in the hands of his widow, Ananya (Kakkar), who remains steadfast in her love for the spouse she’s lost and in her iron will to keep the doors open.
            From the very outset of the story Ananya resists the unflagging enthusiasm and determination of Jacob (Tommy Bo), her young Thai-American cook who is much more than that: He’s been part of the family from childhood and calls her “Auntie.” Seeing the writing on the wall, Jacob is pushing hard for a reinvention of the menu and the restaurant, convinced that a fast-paced, modernized fusion eatery will not only save House of India but, dream of dreams, could become a money-making franchise.
            Ananya wants no part of Indian tacos or quesadillas, to say nothing of a restaurant completely unlike what her American dream-seeking husband had founded.
            Her steel-willed daughter Vaidehi (Supriya Ganesh) is in complete agreement. Her response to Jacob’s high-energy pitches is more like contempt than like her mother’s exasperation.
            Then entering the picture is Ananya’s wayward son Vikram (Deven Kolluri), who has been in New York for three years ostensibly trying to meet a book-writing deadline. He’s there “to do research,” he informs everyone, though his story feels dubious from the start.
            The ensuing sparring over House of India’s future proceeds beningly and amusingly enough until with everyone gone, the lights low and the restaurant closed a hooded figure breaks in, overturns chairs and spray-paints a hate-crime message on one of the woven carpets.
            In spite of his business fervor, it strains believability a little when almost immediately Jacob suggests that Ananya exploit the hate-crime incursion for publicity. He seems to genuinely love his “auntie” and had to know the idea would upset her, which it does.
            So it equally stretches the imagination a little when not long after Ananya agrees, and before we know it the transformation of House of India is under way.
            This is physically achieved in a remarkable sequence in which before audience eyes all of the traditional Indian restaurant furnishings, including the intricate carpets, are removed and then replaced with the neo-modern trappings of every trendy fast-food-fusion joint you’ve ever patronized. There’s even a hip-hop soundtrack. The new restaurant is now called Toor, and much fun is had with the otherwise savvy Jacob’s hapless inability to pronounce that properly.
            There’s more to “House of India” than this transformation. Both Vai and Vik harbor secrets from their mother, later revealed. Vik also confesses a resentment to Jacob, less of him than of Vik’s own father.
            The interpersonal workings of “House of India” are when the play functions at its highest stakes and most affecting. What these have in common is the presence of Kakkar as Ananya, whether it’s her tender reminiscing with Jacob about her friendship with his mother or his childhood involvement with the family, or the stern passion in her confrontations with her children. Playwright Kumar’s narrative decision as to Ananya’s ultimate destiny may surprise some but will gratify most, as it did me.
            Aside from Kakkar and earnest supporting performances from Bo, Ganesh and Kolluri, this production is enhanced by Chika Shimizu’s scenic design of the two restaurant settings with the connecting outside doorway into both, and Cha See’s alternately bright and moodier lighting. The White Theatre’s in-the-round environs comes with its viewing challenges depending on where one is seated, but then the size is just right for what House of India/Toor is supposed to be.
            The chief contribution of “House of India” is its honoring of deeply rooted Indian traditions, embrace of family and of course cooking. Your heart may be full afterward, but you’ll hunger for a dosa or a spoonful of sambar stew.
            “House of India” runs through June 8 in the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre in Balboa Park.