Michelle Caravia flanked by (holding flags) Lena Ceja, left, and Alyssa Rodriguez in "La Havana Madrid."                                                                                                                             Photo by Tanya Perez

            If you go to 959. W. Belmont Avenue near Sheffield on Chicago’s North Side you’ll find a hair salon there called Milio’s. Big deal, you say.
            But if the walls of that hair salon could talk …
            Or play music.
            That address once belonged to a nightclub that in the 1960s and early ‘70s was a haven for immigrants newly arrived in America from Cuba, Colombia and Puerto Rico. It was called La Havana Madrid.
            The legacy of that beloved nightspot is celebrated in Sandra Delgado’s play with music, also titled “La Havana Madrid.” Tripling up, La Havana Madrid is also the name of the emcee in this engaging show that based on true stories melds music and history.
            Delgado also wrote the Spanish lyrics for the songs in “La Havana Madrid, which were composed by Cristian Amigo. And in 2023 at South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa, she also portrayed that glamorous singing emcee in its two-act production.
            At New Village Arts in Carlsbad, Richard Trujillo directs a staging of “La Havana Madrid” that runs through April 27. It features Michelle Caravia in the title role, and it’s her rangy, passionate vocals that are at the center of this pleasing production of Delgado’s show.
            The smallish stage at NVA allows the theater to feel more like a club or cabaret than “La Havana Madrid” might in a larger house. (“La Havana Madrid” world-premiered in 2016, fittingly at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre.) But here’s the most welcome development: New Village’s production includes a live band onstage, playing behind a sheer drapery and led by bassist Carlos Odiano, who also gets to be part of the story at times. The group features MC Green on guitar, Joe Aportela on percussion, Carson Inouye on keyboards and Gabriella Hendricks on horns.
            The only disappointment of NVA’s exceptional production last year of “The Color Purple” musical was that it was presented without live musicians. “La Havana Madrid” truly demands a band in the mix – how can you reproduce a red-hot cabaret with recorded music? The ensemble here is lively and tight and conversant with the varied musical styles represented in Amigo’s set list.
            Those songs are interwoven among vignettes about the immigrants from afar who’d settled in Chicago neighborhoods during this dynamic time period – from the “Peter Pan Kids” who fled Cuba to escape the Castro regime to the Puerto Ricans who longed to embrace a home away from home.
            The storytellers are the “La Havana Madrid” cast members: Lena Ceja, Fredy Gomez Cruz, Alyssa Rodriguez, Leonardo Romero and Jawann McBeth.
            Ceja, the Natasha of Cygnet Theatre’s unforgettable “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812” last year, is featured in two of the NVA show’s sequences – one a charming meet-cute with Romero, the other a more incendiary turn in Act Two, the more serious and thoughtful half of “La Havana Madrid.”
            Because for all the good times had and joy expressed in that Chicago club many who frequented it found life in their new American home at best difficult to assimilate into and at worst unfriendly, hostile and even violent. This is where the currency of Delgado’s play stands out: Sixty years later immigrants are still being chased down, harassed or detained in this Land of the Free.
            Projections (designed by Michael Wogulis) visually dramatize the history unfolding around the heyday of La Havana Madrid, depicting the Chicago that once was but also the faces of those who struggled to be part of its neighborhoods and to live in peace.
            The combining of music, dance and historical storytelling isn’t always seamless in “La Havana Madrid.” Just as the soulful music and the choreography (by Lilea Alvarez and Tamara Rodriguez) take us away, it’s back to exposition. I didn’t want a sung-through “La Havana Madrid,” but the more music, especially given the presence of a live band, the better.
            I will say this: After seeing “La Havana Madrid” I am more curious, more inclined to know what it was like at the Belmont & Sheffield of the past and to know who found escape and an embrace of home there.
            “La Havana Madrid” runs through April 27 at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad.

Left to right: Jocorey Mitchell, Kevane La'Marr Coleman, Rondrell McCormick, Tristan J Shuler and Xavier Daniels in "The Hot Wing King."                                                                    Karli Cadel Photography

                Wings are not my thing. A good story is. So are characters worth caring about.
          “The Hot Wing King” has all three, and I have to admit that once the opening-night performance of Katori Hall’s winning dramedy at Cygnet Theatre was over, I did start wondering if I’d judged wings too harshly.
            Cordell Crutchfield and his sous chefs, aka the New Wing Order, sure know how to cook them. As it turns out, the hotter the better.
            Hall’s play, centered around an annual Hot Wang Festival in Memphis, had an inauspicious beginning, world-premiering on March 1, 2020, at the Signature Theatre in Arlington, Va. Steve Broadnax III, who earlier this year directed the outstanding “Appropriate” at the Old Globe, was at the helm of that first “Hot Wing King” production, one suspended practically from the start by COVID-19.
            “The Hot Wing King” would return to theaters in safer times, however, and end up winning Hall the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2021.
            At Cygnet under the direction of Kian Kline-Chilton (who just recently directed “We Are Continuous” at Diversionary in University Heights), “The Hot Wing King” is being staged as the theater’s penultimate production before the company relocates from Old Town to its new venue in Liberty Station. With its superb ensemble and a tale that can be affecting a well as joyous, “The Hot Wing King” is an entertaining show with multiple emotional entry points.
            That Hot Wang Festival contest is Hall’s pretext for examining what it means to be a Black gay man, what constitutes a family and how fragile relationships – all relationships – truly are.
            Cordell (Rondrell McCormick, returning to Cygnet three years after appearing in its “Mud Row”) has left his wife of 20 years and two children in St. Louis and moved to Memphis to be with the man he loves. That would be Dwayne (Tristan J Shuler), who has opened his home and his heart even as he harbors doubts about the depth of Cordell’s emotional commitment.
            That’s simmering beneath the surface of an at-first-blush lighthearted story situated primarily in the kitchen, where at the outset Cordell, Dwayne and their New Wing Order team that also includes barber and rabid Memphis Grizzlies fan Big Charles (Xavier Daniels) and the proudly flamboyant Isom (Kevane La’Marr Coleman) are prepping for that wings contest. It’s Cordell’s dream to be crowned the “Hot Wing King.”
            The first 15 minutes or so of the play finds the team in high spirits, in and around the functional kitchen designed at Cygnet by Audrey R. Casteris – cooking, joking, dancing. Though it becomes apparent that Cordell and Dwayne are still working out the full extent of their relationship, events don’t take a major turn until the unexpected arrival of Dwayne’s teen nephew EJ (Jocorey Mitchell) and his shady father TJ (Carter Piggee). They need refuge from something unspecified and unlawful that TJ is up to.
            Because the boy is the son of Dwayne’s slain sister (in a police killing for which Dwayne blames himself), EJ is taken in and upstairs “for the night.” This is enough to incite objection from Cordell, who believes Dwayne is making all the household decisions unilaterally. As the wings contest nears, the stakes heighten, stakes that have little to do with cooking.
            Will Cordell and Dwayne stay together? Can they make it work?
            What about the Hot Wang Festival?
            The two conflicts would seem only tangentially related with one far more important involving as it does Cordell’s and Dwayne’s relationship, Cordell’s identity crisis and the future of a teen-aged boy who because of his father is on the road to no good, though he’s a boy who wants no part of that.
            The prep for the wings competition provides cathartic humor amid the high drama, especially when the playful, unpredictable Isom inadvertently spices the batch to be entered in the contest with extremely hot ingredients. Dwayne’s innocent taste of that misguided concoction, a golden comedy moment, had the Cygnet audience howling on opening night. Me too.
            That diversion does not detract from the weightier narrative – the ensuing confrontations and confessions are often heart-rending.
            Shuler, who’s making his San Diego theater debut with “Hot Wing Kings,” is the standout among the stellar cast. A special nod, too, to young Mitchell, a student at Grossmont Community College, who makes us feel the desperation to be loved and to belong that resides in a boy who’s lost his mother and whose father has lost his way.
            The New Wing Order foursome is a treat to watch when they’re in full cooking and cavorting mode. At the same time, Hall’s script does not waver from its insights into what is Black masculinity, what makes a father a father, and what makes a man a man.
            That all this requires two hours and 45 minutes with an intermission may be understandable, but the play had room for trimming, and it seems to end at least three times before it actually does.
            Who am I to question a writer like Hall, but possibly she over-wrote even as she wrote beautifully. At least the wings don’t get overcooked. Over-spiced, yes, but not over-cooked.
            “The Hot Wing King” runs through May 2 at Cygnet Theatre in Old Town.

Nicolas A. Castillo and Lark Laudenslager in "Gruesome Playground Injuries." Photo by Estefania Ricalde

            In an uncommon staging device, the two actors co-starring in Loud Fridge Theatre Group’s season-opening “Gruesome Playground Injuries” change clothes or apply makeup right before our eyes in between the eight scenes that comprise this 2009 play by Rajiv Joseph.
            In the case especially of actor Nicolas A. Castillo, who’s portraying a character repeatedly (even wantonly) injuring himself, these inter-scene sequences may stir anxiety, or dread in my case. What will Doug will look like when the story resumes? Where will the stage blood be? How realistic, how unnerving might it appear? Will he be walking with a cane, sitting in a wheelchair or what?
            It’s that tension that accounts for the rather morbid appeal of this one-act play about a friendship/not-quite-romance between Doug and Kayleen (Lark Laudenslager), who at first seems bothered only by stomach pains only to have more serious physical damage of her own later manifest itself.
            Produced in the spare confines of the Tenth Avenue Arts Center and directed tautly by Kaylin Saur, “Gruesome Playground Injuries” is, as they say, not for the squeamish. Even if you don’t buy the effects of the stage makeup, the descriptions of some of Doug’s injuries (in particular the aftermath of a fireworks accident) could roil your stomach. As could Kayleen’s graphic account of the consequences of her eating disorder.
            None of this should come as a surprise. After all, “gruesome” is in the title. Fair and full disclosure.
            The eight scenes of the play span 30 years in the relationship between Doug and Kayleen, who first meet in an elementary school nurse’s office after Doug has ridden his bicycle off a roof. The seven ensuing scenes skip back and forth in time, flitting from the pair’s teen years to their late 30s and periods in between. I’m not altogether sure why Joseph chose to utilize this non-chronological approach other than perhaps to suggest that time in a relationship is fluid or even relative.
            Castillo and Laudenslager are tasked with portraying their characters at very different times of life, from childhood to pushing 40. While Castillo’s Doug comes off demeanor-wise as mostly the same throughout, Laudenslager is able to capture the childlike petulance requisite to the earlier time periods while retaining just enough of it to portray an adult woman who’s never truly grown out of her insecurities and bitterness, most of that resulting from bad or absent parenting.
            Joseph’s script is never completely clear about the true nature of the relationship between his two characters. It’s deeper than acquaintanceship, yet connected in a way by something more complex than romantic attraction. Doug and Kayleen aren’t lovers or besties. They are bound by the daredevil Doug’s inevitable injuries and afflictions. As the years pass, Kayleen’s own injuries become more pronounced, to which Doug responds practically with excitement.
            The Loud Fridge production moves slowly, like a wound that will only heal in its own time, if at all. The lone enhancement to Doug and Kayleen’s quiet encounters and private costume/makeup changes is the recurring playing of “Dream A Little Dream of Me,” variously heard with Mama Cass tenderness or heavy metal thrashing.
            It’s an appropriate tune, because whatever Doug and Kayleen share, it feels like part reverie, part nightmare.
            “Gruesome Playground Injuries” runs through April 26 at the Tenth Avenue Arts Center downtown.

Clockwise from left: Isabelle McCalla, Krystina Alabado, Kate Rockwell and Ryann Redmond in "Regency Girls."                                                                                                                        Photo by Jim Cox

            At its most promising, “Regency Girls” may do for theater what “Barbie” did for the movies: royally piss off the patriarchy while taking a big swing for women’s autonomy, especially when it comes to their own bodies. The Old Globe is calling this world-premiere show “Broadway-bound,” so in the not-so-distant future Middle America could be singing along with Madame Restell, fixer of “female troubles” and disgusted poser of the musical question “Can you believe this shit is still happening in 1810?”
            But for now the Globe is home to “Regency Girls,” a proudly irreverent, loudly rebellious, no-holds-barred musical comedy that goes where “Pride and Prejudice” dared not go. Absolutely it’s an audience pleaser, though at a bloated two hours and 40 minutes I’d like to have been pleased at least 20 minutes less.
            “Regency Girls” was conceived (you’ll see why that’s a play on words shortly) pre-COVID-19 pandemic and before the overturning by the Supreme Court of Roe v. Wade, but it’s assuredly a show for these times – 200 years after the Regency era in England, yes, but alas connectable to those in power on this side of the Atlantic striving to turn back the clock for women. Its creators comprise a potent team: Hollywood-based writers Jennifer Crittenden and Gabrielle Allan (book), whose comedy credits primarily for television and film are top of the line; composer Curtis Moore (Broadway and television) and lyricist Amanda Green (“Mr. Saturday Night,” “Bring It On,” et al). The notion for “Regency Girls” began with Green, and it’s her consistently clever lyrics that give the production its zing.
            Never during the entire production does anyone either say or sing out loud the A-word, but it’s crystal clear early in the going of “Regency Girls” that unmarried protagonist Elinor Benton (Isabelle McCalla) is desirous of ridding herself of an unwanted pregnancy. The consequence of a night being “occupied” as he calls it by her fiancé Stanton (Nik Walker). That threatens to leave Elinor “Ruined” as goes the ensuing musical lament featuring herself, vacuous sister Jane (Kate Rockwell), outspoken friend Petunia (Ryann Redmond) and Elinor’s very sharp maid Dabney (Krystina Alabado). But the latter then sounds a hopeful note: There’s a woman in London, a Madame Restelle, who knows how to fix “Female Troubles” (the next song in the show).
            Co-writers Crittenden and Allan have described what then happens as a “Wizard of Oz”-like road trip for the four women – Elinor, Jane, Petunia and Dabney – with the end of their Yellow Brick Road being the door of Madame Restelle (Janine LaManna), a character based on a real-life Madame Restelle, a midwife and abortionist who lived in the 19th century.
            But we don’t even meet Madame Restelle until the second act. In the interim, our Regency Girls encounter a comical Robin Hood type who calls himself Galloping Dick (Gabe Gibbs). If that’s less than subtle it’s compatible with “Regency Girls” as a whole, which while shielding the audience from the A-word holds little else back. The excess would seem, well, excessive if not for the urgency of the show’s recurring message, one best articulated by the production closing number titled “We Are Never Going Back There Again.”
            Galloping Dick aside, Act One includes the musical’s best scene and the one that makes the point of “Regency Girls” with comic antics more than preachiness. “Man Things” finds Elinor and Petunia dressed as men and giddily cavorting with the guys raising hell in a tavern. Amid the fun Elinor realizes that not only can she belch out loud with the best of the boys but that when accepted as a man her opinion on things actually matters. By contrast upstairs, above the raucousness, are Jane and Dabney, “Patiently Waiting” side by side and sharing a ladylike raisin for sustenance.
            An inspired sequence.
            The “Regency Girls” creators devised an antagonist to toss into the story – the snooty and scheming Lady Catherine (also played by LaManna), who has learned of Elinor’s pregnancy and of her mission and who seeks to blackmail her into wedding someone else. Thereby saving the dashing Stanton for one of her odd-duck daughters.
            The scenes with Lady Catherine at their center feel overplayed, and that’s saying something in a show with as many bold strokes as this one.
            Nothing’s restrained in Act Two, in which Madame Restelle, whom we finally encounter, tears through the rousing “How Long (in 1810)” like it was a finale, and in a by-comparison-subdued number previously prim Jane “Finds Her Tingle.” No partner needed.
            By the time we get to “Brains and Booty” with the four women clad as if for midnight burlesque, the better to shock the stuffed shirts at a ball, “Regency Girls” has exceeded the speed limit. It’s careened away from what seemed an initial intention to take “Pride and Prejudice” to naughtier and more feminist levels. It starts to feel like too much show.
            Fortunately, this enterprising world premiere regains its footing and its more thoughtful tone in the latter 15, 20 minutes when the messaging centers on choice. (Elinor must do what she must do while Dabney, revealed to be “in trouble” herself, must do what she must do.)
            Comeuppances and pleasing pairings-up are guaranteed from then onward.
            Unquestionable is the sheer energy generated by the principal cast of “Regency Girls.” McCalla, Rockwell, Redmond and Alabado are a mighty and mightily engaging foursome, possessing both comic and vocal chops, each of them. McCalla (“The Prom” and “Disney’s Aladdin” on Broadway) stands out on her own, too, as a worthy heroine that even Jane Austen would approve of.
            Doing double-duty, the stalwart-voiced LaManna would have been better served had she been given more Madame Restelle and less Lady Catherine, and so would the show. Gibbs, meanwhile, makes the most of playing both Galloping Dick and Jane’s duplicitous intended, Dingley, who it’s revealed never met a courtesan he didn’t favor.
            Director and choreographer Josh Rhodes does wonderwork with all that’s going on, practically from the outset. “Regency Girls” is perpetually in motion and that serves it well, especially given its length.
            His “Regency Girls” sure looks and sounds like it’s ready for Broadway. Costume designer David I. Reynoso nails the romanticized period, transporting us back in time – to the English countryside in 1810 -- with a flourish, and music director Patrick Sulken leads a marvelous orchestra.
            “Regency Girls” is funny but it’s quite serious about the better world for women to which it aspires. “Let us speak our truth let us lift our pen,” goes the closing number, “let us roll the tide with the strength of ten / for the just must win ev’ry now and then.”
            “Regency Girls” runs through May 11 at the Old Globe in Balboa Park.

Clockwise from left: Isabelle McCalla, Krystina Alabado, Kate Rockwell and Ryann Redmond in "Regency Girls."                                                                                                                        Photo by Jim Cox

            At its most promising, “Regency Girls” may do for theater what “Barbie” did for the movies: royally piss off the patriarchy while taking a big swing for women’s autonomy, especially when it comes to their own bodies. The Old Globe is calling this world-premiere show “Broadway-bound,” so in the not-so-distant future Middle America could be singing along with Madame Restell, fixer of “female troubles” and disgusted poser of the musical question “Can you believe this shit is still happening in 1810?”
            But for now the Globe is home to “Regency Girls,” a proudly irreverent, loudly rebellious, no-holds-barred musical comedy that goes where “Pride and Prejudice” dared not go. Absolutely it’s an audience pleaser, though at a bloated two hours and 40 minutes I’d like to have been pleased at least 20 minutes less.
            “Regency Girls” was conceived (you’ll see why that’s a play on words shortly) pre-COVID-19 pandemic and before the overturning by the Supreme Court of Roe v. Wade, but it’s assuredly a show for these times – 200 years after the Regency era in England, yes, but alas connectable to those in power on this side of the Atlantic striving to turn back the clock for women. Its creators comprise a potent team: Hollywood-based writers Jennifer Crittenden and Gabrielle Allan (book), whose comedy credits primarily for television and film are top of the line; composer Curtis Moore (Broadway and television) and lyricist Amanda Green (“Mr. Saturday Night,” “Bring It On,” et al). The notion for “Regency Girls” began with Green, and it’s her consistently clever lyrics that give the production its zing.
            Never during the entire production does anyone either say or sing out loud the A-word, but it’s crystal clear early in the going of “Regency Girls” that unmarried protagonist Elinor Benton (Isabelle McCalla) is desirous of ridding herself of an unwanted pregnancy. The consequence of a night being “occupied” as he calls it by her fiancé Stanton (Nik Walker). That threatens to leave Elinor “Ruined” as goes the ensuing musical lament featuring herself, vacuous sister Jane (Kate Rockwell), outspoken sister Petunia (Ryann Redmond) and Elinor’s very sharp maid Dabney (Krystina Alabado). But the latter then sounds a hopeful note: There’s a woman in London, a Madame Restelle, who knows how to fix “Female Troubles” (the next song in the show).
            Co-writers Crittenden and Allan have described what then happens as a “Wizard of Oz”-like road trip for the four women – Elinor, Jane, Petunia and Dabney – with the end of their Yellow Brick Road being the door of Madame Restelle (Janine LaManna), a character based on a real-life Madame Restelle, a midwife and abortionist who lived in the 19th century.
            But we don’t even meet Madame Restelle until the second act. In the interim, our Regency Girls encounter a comical Robin Hood type who calls himself Galloping Dick (Gabe Gibbs). If that’s less than subtle it’s compatible with “Regency Girls” as a whole, which while shielding the audience from the A-word holds little else back. The excess would seem, well, excessive if not for the urgency of the show’s recurring message, one best articulated by the production closing number titled “We Are Never Going Back There Again.” But I'm getting ahead of myself.
            Galloping Dick aside, Act One includes the musical’s best scene and the one that makes the point of “Regency Girls” with comic antics more than preachiness. “Man Things” finds Elinor and Petunia dressed as men and giddily cavorting with the guys raising hell in a tavern. Amid the fun Elinor realizes that not only can she belch out loud with the best of the boys but that when accepted as a man her opinion on things actually matters. By contrast upstairs, above the raucousness, are Jane and Dabney, “Patiently Waiting” side by side and sharing a raisin for sustenance.
            An inspired sequence.
            The “Regency Girls” creators devised an antagonist to toss into the story – the snooty and scheming Lady Catherine (also played by LaManna), who has learned of Elinor’s pregnancy and of her mission and who seeks to blackmail her into wedding someone else. Thereby saving the dashing Stanton for one of her odd-duck daughters.
            The scenes with Lady Catherine at their center feel overplayed, and that’s saying something in a show with as many bold strokes as this one.
            Nothing’s restrained in Act Two, in which Madame Restelle, whom we finally encounter, tears through the rousing “How Long (in 1810)” like it was a finale, and in a by-comparison-subdued number previously prim Jane “Finds Her Tingle.” No partner needed.
            By the time we get to “Brains and Booty” with the four women clad as if for midnight burlesque, the better to shock the stuffed shirts at a ball, “Regency Girls” has exceeded the speed limit. It’s careened away from what seemed an initial intention to take “Pride and Prejudice” to naughtier and more feminist levels. It starts to feel like too much show.
            Fortunately, this enterprising world premiere regains its footing and its more thoughtful tone in the latter 15, 20 minutes when the messaging centers on choice. (Elinor must do what she must do while Dabney, admitting to being “in trouble” herself, must do what she must do.)
            Comeuppances and pleasing pairings-up are guaranteed from then onward.
            Unquestionable is the sheer energy generated by the principal cast of “Regency Girls.” McCalla, Rockwell, Redmond and Alabado are a mighty and mightily engaging foursome, each possessing both comic and vocal chops. McCalla (“The Prom” and “Disney’s Aladdin” on Broadway) stands out on her own, too, as a worthy heroine that even Jane Austen would approve of.
            Doing double-duty, the stalwart-voiced LaManna would have been better served had she been given more Madame Restelle and less Lady Catherine, and so would the show. Gibbs, meanwhile, makes the most of playing both Galloping Dick and Jane’s duplicitous intended, Dingley, who it’s revealed never met a courtesan he didn’t favor.
            Director and choreographer Josh Rhodes does wonderwork with all that’s going on, practically from the outset. “Regency Girls” is perpetually in motion and that serves it well, especially given its length.
            His “Regency Girls” sure looks and sounds like it’s ready for Broadway. Costume designer David I. Reynoso nails the romanticized period, transporting us back in time – to the English countryside in 1810 -- with a flourish, and music director Patrick Sulken leads a marvelous orchestra.
            “Regency Girls” is funny but it’s quite serious about the better world for women to which it aspires. “Let us speak our truth, let us lift our pen,” goes the closing number, “let us roll the tide with the strength of ten / for the just must win ev’ry now and then.”
            “Regency Girls” runs through May 11 at the Old Globe in Balboa Park.