Deborah Gilmour Smyth and Tom Zohar (with William Huffaker in the background) in "The Waverly Gallery." Photo by Michael Makie

            I remember a few years ago I was showing one of the classes I teach at San Diego State a documentary about little robot seals being used in senior-care homes to comfort anxious and disoriented residents. When the film had concluded and the lights in the classroom went up, one of my students said aloud: “Oh my God, I don’t want to get old!”
            It made me wonder on my way out of the Tenth Avenue Arts Center after opening night of Backyard Renaissance’s “The Waverly Gallery” how many people in that audience were thinking during – and afterward – the same thing that student said out loud.
            Gladys Green, the protagonist of Kenneth Lonergan’s play, doesn’t want to hear that it’s terrible getting old, which in so many words her daughter’s husband Howard bluntly tells her. He apologizes for his tactlessness, but who can blame Gladys for snapping? NO ONE wants to hear it.
            One might suspect, given the premise of “The Waverly Gallery” – a small but tight New York family coping with the heart-breaking, painful slipping of their matriarch into the throes of Alzheimer’s – would be a very difficult watch, and it is, but not completely. Lonergan, who’s demonstrated in his thoughtful film scripts such as for “You Can Count On Me” and “Manchester By the Sea" a gift for dramatizing family crises with heart and hope, wrings a good deal of humor out of the story of Gladys Green and her family. It’s not until the last 10 minutes or so that the goings are so upsetting that all one can do is sit, frozen.
            Initially, it is jarring to hear an audience laughing as Gladys (Deborah Gilmour Smyth, brilliant) gabs endlessly, forgets things left and right, repeats herself and tries to over-feed the family’s dog. But as Gladys deteriorates, the laughter in the house is less and less.
            How many thousands (maybe more?) families in America alone are dealing with this terrible predicament: an elder parent or grandparent whose dementia and general health is becoming worse and worse, leaving the family with the choice of putting them “in a home,” provided they could afford the cost of doing so, or, as Gladys’ daughter, Ellen (Katie MacNichol), her husband Howard (Alexander Ameen) and grandson Daniel (Tom Zohar) do, try to care for that elder person themselves?
            In the case of “The Waverly Gallery” as it is for many who in later life suffer from Alzheimer’s, Gladys Green once had a whole life. In younger years she was a successful lawyer and then the proprietor of an art gallery in Greenwich Village. That gallery, where the elder Gladys is now spending most of her time, is scarcely frequented, but it is her lifeline, her best friend.
            The secondary narrative of the play is the arrival at Gladys’ gallery of a budding young artist from Boston, Don Bowman (William Huffaker), whose work we can assume is no great shakes, but Gladys likes him and likes the company. She not only gives him her walls to display his art but a place to live in an unseen back room.
            But the fates are cruel and inevitable. Not only is Gladys’ mental state worsening and her delusions increasing, but the landlord of the gallery space informs the family that he intends to evict Gladys so that he can build a café adjunct to his hotel.
            These circumstances, all of them, are dire and urgent, but “The Waverly Gallery” is equally focused – no, more so – on the relationships of this emotionally embattled family. Grandson Daniel (the play’s narrator) lives in the same building that Gladys does, and he absorbs most of the trauma from his grandmother’s decline. Yet he loves her and is patient until he can’t be patient anymore. The onstage dynamic between Gilmour Smyth and Zohar, who’s never been better, is lovely and wrenching.
            Gladys’ daughter Ellen is losing her inner war with patience and is seemingly on the verge of a breakdown, yet MacNichol exudes the character’s inner strength that somehow keeps Ellen together.
            Ameen’s Howard cares but just can’t help his intermittent lack of diplomacy. I’m sure there are Howards everywhere in a family fraught like this one who does the best he can without being able to wholly get in touch with his feelings.
            The Don Bowman character is sweet and naïve at first, though shows himself to be self-involved and less than understanding of the family’s feelings. Really good Boston accent, by the way, Mr. Huffaker.
            Backyard’s production is directed by Francis Gercke, who co-directed (and performed in) a staging of “The Waverly Gallery” 20 years ago. This “Waverly” is one of Gercke’s finest directing efforts. He’s allowing his stellar cast to tap into every complex feeling and thought instilled in these richly realized Lonergan characters.
            For Gilmour Smyth, this makes three first-rate performances in a row for Backyard Renaissance: as Violet in “August: Osage County” in 2023, as Mag Folan in “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” last year, and now “The Waverly Gallery.” In each case I marveled at how she could give all to these incredibly demanding roles performance after performance. Fortunately for theatergoers, she sure can.
            “The Waverly Gallery” runs through Dec. 6 at the Tenth Avenue Arts Center downtown.

Left to right: Sandy Campbell, Sara Frondoni and Kyle Adam Blair in "Master Class."  Photo by Tim Botsko

            There’s a singular fascination about watching teachers teach, whether it’s in the movies (‘Stand and Deliver” for one), on television (“Abbott Elementary” or dare I cite “Welcome Back, Kotter”?) or on the stage (“School of Rock,” et al). I’ve been reminded of this by seeing for the second time a production of Terrence McNally’s “Master Class,” which depicts the august opera diva Maria Callas teaching/bullying hopeful students at the Juilliard School in the early ‘70s.
            It was 10 whole years ago that I saw Sandy Campbell portray Callas in bygone ion theatre’s production of “Master Class.” The play and Campbell are back, this time in a co-production between Roustabouts Theatre and Scripps Ranch Theatre directed by Phil Johnson.
            Because a decade has passed, I’d mostly forgotten the ion “Master Class” other than remembering that Campbell was superb in the role of arguably opera’s grandest and possibly most temperamental legend. The other night at Scripps Ranch Theatre’s Legler Benbough space on the Alliant International University campus it started to come back to me. The premise: a mix of Callas monologue (often addressing the audience) and interactions with three students – two sopranos and a tenor, with intermingling of biographical musings and memories from “La Divina.”
            Campbell is superb once again. That’s not a surprise. What was a bit of a surprise this time around is that those aforementioned biographical musings and vocalized memories are definitely the heart of “Master Class” and the best reason to see it. I was not as patient this time around with the teaching sequences, even though the three performers (Abigail Grace Allwein, Sara Frondoni and Ben Read) are outstanding singers. (Disclaimer: I’m not an opera aficionado, so maybe I’m not qualified to truly judge.) The first act encounter between Callas and Allwein’s Sophie feels repetitive and drawn out. The much more compelling Act Two, in which Callas meets and hears tenor Anthony (Read’s aria is by far the most affecting in the show) and the fiery Sharon whom Frondoni portrays, also culminates with Campbell’s deepest, most emotional monologue, the worth-the-price-of-admission sequence.
            The vocal performances are accompanied by Kyle Adam Blair who besides playing piano gets a few choice lines here and there. Tim Benson makes cameos as a stagehand exasperated by Callas’ orders and complete indifference to his existence.
            The Benbough stage is kind of an odd, horizontal space, but only Campbell moves around much. What is happily surprising is that the sound (designed by Ted Leib, who also supervised the fascinating Callas biographical projections) is excellent. Even the sopranos’ highest notes ring true and pure in the theater.
            Make no mistake, however. This was and is a tour-de-force for Sandy Campbell whose Maria Callas is wry, funny, infuriating, unkind, wounded, unsympathetic AND sympathetic almost all at once. That’s an onerous task for any actor.
            Besides her performance, I took away from seeing “Master Class” a second time that Maria Callas’ sometimes-glamorous life was almost a tragic one, for the one thing she wanted more than anything else – true love – really escaped her. I also took away the fact that paramour Aristotle Onassis was a gazillionaire bully not worthy of her.
            I’m still not very interested in opera but it’s impossible to see “Master Class” and not be interested in – and beguiled by – the towering enigma that was Maria Callas.
            “Master Class” runs through Dec. 14 at the Legler Benbough Theatre on the campus of Alliant International University in Scripps Ranch.

 Marti Gobel in "Beauty's Daughter."                                                                Photo by Bernadette Johnson

            Dael Orlandersmith’s “Beauty’s Daughter” may be set in the Harlem of the 1990s, but considering the often-tragic world in which we all reside, the setting could be anywhere, and there’s something personal of the one-person play’s protagonist, Diane, in each of us.
            The same could be said for the characters whose grueling lives swirl around Diane, all portrayed by Marti Gobel in OnWord Theatre’s West Coast premiere of the 1995 “Beauty’s Daughter.”
OnWord is completing its first-ever season with this staging that stars co-founder Gobel and is directed by another, Danielle Bunch. Next year will mark its first full season with six productions scheduled beginning with one of Adam Rapp’s “Red Light Winter.”
            The 80-minute “Beauty’s Daughter,” which is being performed in Diversionary Theatre’s upstairs Black Box space, is aching in its honesty and its pain, yet somehow, through Gobel’s inhabiting of the tormented but resilient Diane, is an empowering declaration of self and spirit.
             The tiny Black Box space means that Gobel and the characters she’s playing are as close to you as they must have been to playwright Orlandersmith, who wrote a script (which she originally performed herself) that is as raw and tough as the streets but more than often lyrical and touching. The recorded spoken-word interludes directed by Dana King that are heard during Gobel’s costume changes echo with hard-hewn insight, defiance, the self-realization of a fighter and a survivor.
          “Beauty’s Daughter” opens with Gobel as 31-year-old Diane, preoccupied initially with a misguided dalliance with an Irishman who ultimately tells her, with a terseness not characteristic of an Irishman, that he doesn’t love her. This is only the entry point into Diane’s battle-tested soul.
            What ensues are the arrival and departure of those who must be wearing on her, in some cases haunting her.
            A streetwise Puerto Rican teenager, Papo, begs Diane to write an important term paper for him, initially flattering her in his swaggering way before, when refused, giving her a double dose of the middle finger.
           The most tender shadow is Mary, who is more mother to Diane than her real mother could ever be (we intuit this even before Beauty appears later). Mary’s imagining herself freed from the trials of old age and suddenly upright and 15 years old again with a life unlived ahead of her, proves to be one of Gobel’s most moving turns.
          Diane has a surrogate father in Louis, the blind drug addict who beckons to her from somewhere on the street. His recriminations and resentments are sheathed in a pitiful plea for help – change or folded money, whatever she can – and in his mind – should feed to him.
           There’s a degree of comic relief in Gobel’s transition to the unhappily married young man Anthony, a strutting poser who artlessly tries to pick up on her in a bar. It turns out the two of them share a passion for and an escape into the impetuosity of jazz music – but reality in the form of Anthony’s unwanted wife intrudes.
          The irony of the play’s title manifests itself in Beauty, Diane’s bitter, pathetically alcoholic mother, sprawled on the floor, swigging from Johnny Walker Black, a mean martyr who regards through sodden eyes her only child as a failure and someone who robbed she herself of just about everything.
           Diane returns to deliver a poetical denouement, bound to reconcile the past and the present. It’s a nearly sanguine coda to the sadness that preceded it.
          Gobel’s sensitivity, strength and versatility are all on display in what is a grand performance with just the right touch of restraint. Given the intimate environs of the Black Box, we’re practically in her head with her, and she is the light that shows us the way out of the darkness.
         “Beauty’s Daughter” runs through Nov. 30 at Diversionary Theatre’s Black Box in University Heights.

Steven Lone (left) and Jake Bradford in "The Strangers."                                       Karli Cadel Photography

            The fledgling Chalk Circle Collective (Megan Carmitchel, Michael Cusimano, Frankie Errington) describes its mission and its work as artist-centered, and I quote from its mission statement, to “empower artists to take ownership of the theatrical experience by providing a safe space to collaborate, to risk, and to innovate.”
            This company’s first multi-actor production (following the two-handers “Turn of the Screw” and “Constellations”) couldn’t be more in line with that avowed mission. Christopher Oscar Pena’s epic “The Strangers,” which Chalk Circle is giving its West Coast premiere, is a collaborative effort from a cast of eight local actors, director Coleman Ray Clark, and a sizable production team (for this staging is in the Old Town Theatre, formerly the home of Cygnet). It’s also risky, because “The Strangers” blurs the fourth wall, weaves in and out of fictional storytelling, and is guaranteed to mess with your head by the time its two and a half hours have concluded.
            As for innovative, that will depend on your definition of the word. I will say that I haven’t seen a production quite like this one. “The Strangers” can be unsettling at times and definitely confounding. If it was playwright Pena’s intention to re-imagine Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” to some extent, he’s more than succeeded. These characters, mired in the darkness and inscrutability of a place called Everytown, are not the folksy folks of Grover’s Corners, even at their most troubled.
            All this said, Pena’s storytelling is serpentine and self-indulgent, a piercing inquiry into the ditches and booby traps of life – alienation, disappointment, depression, suicide, ennui – right up to the point that he seems to tell us, as if enervated by his own ruminations, “F-it, neither love nor happiness is destined to win out.”
            A staging of “Our Town” is the backdrop for the story, though it doesn’t factor in any paramount way into what’s going down. Yes, the apparent protagonist cris (Steven Lone) has returned to what may or may not be his hometown because of the production, and there’s a brief snit about who’s made the cast and who hasn’t. But you could take the “Our Town” thing out completely and it would hardly make a difference.
            Of greater exigency for cris is his fast-track attraction to dave (Jake Bradford), who’s there at the outset to show him around town.
            Meanwhile, dave’s sister Emily (Kimberly Weinberger) is, she says, in love with pearl (Michael Amira Temple) but nonetheless urging pearl to go through with her intention to kill herself. Uh, OK.
            There’s niegel (Michael DiRoma), who is passionate about a protest event and is angry that diego (Javier David), cris’ brother, is more interested in canoodling with his girlfriend (Kelsey Venter).
            Leave us not forget a wedding planner (Venter again) and a homeless woman (Lauren King Thompson), both of whom have a lot to say about the state of impermanence and despair respectively.
            Most of the ethnically diverse characters (told you this was not “Our Town”) speak directly to the audience in monologues. Have to say, it’s a device I’ve never warmed to in the theater, though heaven knows it’s been employed a lot.
            There are two gripping monologues just the same, and they are by far the strongest moments of Pena’s text. The first is from the homeless woman, delivered by Thompson in an almost matter-of-fact tone that gives her observations just the right mixture of street wisdom and cynicism. Even better is cris’ second-act-opening soliloquy about his relationship with his Catholic mother, about his homosexuality and his mother’s reaction to it, about his Latinx heritage, about who and what God is, about the elusiveness of a genuine romance or the absence of just being held, and loved.
            That is indeed a hell of a lot to cover in one monologue, yet its very overload of thoughts and emotions compels us to listen and feel. It’s an affecting and impressive turn from Steven Lone, one that the remainder of “The Strangers” has little chance of living up to afterward.
            The story winds its way toward the occasion of a wedding between cris and dave, though one that feels foredoomed. When a betrayal is revealed, the doubts about a union are heightened. What happens next is … let’s leave it at that. Pena will take you somewhere you probably – likely – did not expect to go.
            These characters are strangers when it comes down to it, from each other and from themselves. I can’t be sure that’s what Pena is endeavoring to tell us utmost, but such a conclusion is inescapable.
            Director Clark is a friend of the playwright’s, and Pena himself was present during early rehearsals, so it can be safely assumed that his vision is faithfully translated to the stage. It’s done so with a fine cast in support of Lone (though this is really an ensemble piece). I only wish that Michael Amira Temple, who’s always a dynamic presence onstage, had more to do.
            Though there was a delay in the house on opening night, “The Strangers” proceeded evidently with all its technical enhancements intact, including sound, lighting and fog effects that factor into the production in a startling and revealing way.
            Here’s acknowledging the contributions of Sammy Webster (lighting design) and Syd Showers (assistant lighting design), Steven Leffue (sound design) and technical director Chad Ryan.
            “The Strangers” is a bit strange, but as with innovative that’s a relative term. Even if it’s trying too mightily to be meaningful, it’s an adventurous slice of theater. It’s also a bold step forward for Chalk Circle Collective.
            “The Strangers” runs through Nov. 30 at the Old Town Theatre.

The cast of "The Strangers."                                                          Photo courtesy of Chalk Circle Collective

            The fledgling Chalk Circle Collective (Megan Carmitchel, Michael Cusimano, Frankie Errington) describes its mission and its work as artist-centered, and I quote from its mission statement, to “empower artists to take ownership of the theatrical experience by providing a safe space to collaborate, to risk, and to innovate.”
            This company’s first multi-actor production (following the two-handers “Turn of the Screw” and “Constellations”) couldn’t be more in line with that avowed mission. Christopher Oscar Pena’s epic “The Strangers,” which Chalk Circle is giving its West Coast premiere, is a collaborative effort from a cast of eight local actors, director Coleman Ray Clark, and a sizable production team (for this staging is in the Old Town Theatre, formerly the home of Cygnet). It’s also risky, because “The Strangers” blurs the fourth wall, weaves in and out of fiction, and is guaranteed to mess with your head by the time its two and a half hours have concluded.
            As for innovative, that will depend on your definition of the word. I will say that I haven’t seen a production quite like this one. “The Strangers” can be unsettling at times and definitely confounding. If it was playwright Pena’s intention to re-imagine Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” to some extent, he’s more than succeeded. These characters, mired in the darkness and inscrutability of Everytown, are not the folksy folks of Grover’s Corners, even at their most troubled.
            All this said, Pena’s storytelling is serpentine and self-indulgent, a piercing inquiry into the ditches and booby traps of life – alienation, disappointment, depression, suicide, ennui – right up to the point that he seems to tell us, as if enervated by his own ruminations, “F-it, neither love nor happiness is destined to win out.”
            A staging of “Our Town” is the backdrop for the story, though it doesn’t factor in any paramount way into what’s going down. Yes, the apparent protagonist cris (Steven Lone) has returned to what may or may not be his hometown because of the production, and there’s a brief snit about who’s made the cast and who hasn’t. But you could take the “Our Town” thing out completely and it would hardly make a difference.
            Of greater exigency for cris is his fast-track attraction to dave (Jake Bradford), who’s there at the outset to show him around town.
            Meanwhile, dave’s sister Emily (Kimberly Weinberger) is, she says, in love with pearl (Michael Amira Temple) but nonetheless urging pearl to go through with her intention to kill herself. Uh, OK.
            There’s niegel (Michael DiRoma), who is passionate about a protest event and is angry that diego (Javier David), cris’ brother, is more interested in canoodling with his girlfriend (Kelsey Venter).
            Leave us not forget a wedding planner (Venter again) and a homeless woman (Lauren King Thompson), both of whom have a lot to say about the state of impermanence and despair respectively.
            Most of the characters – or other characters portrayed by cast members – speak directly to the audience in monologues. Have to say, it’s a device I’ve never warmed to in the theater, though heaven knows it’s been employed a lot.
            There are two gripping monologues just the same, and they are by far the strongest moments of Pena’s text. The first is delivered by the homeless woman, accomplished by Thompson in an almost matter-of-fact tone that gives her observations just the right mixture of street wisdom and cynicism. Even better is cris’ second-act-opening soliloquy about his relationship with his Catholic mother, about his homosexuality and his mother’s reaction to it, about his ethnic heritage, about who and what God is, about the elusiveness of a genuine romance or the absence of just being held, and loved.
            That is indeed a helluva lot to cover in one monologue, yet its very overload of thoughts and emotions compels us to listen and feel. It’s an affecting and impressive turn from Steven Lone, one that the remainder of “The Strangers” has no chance of living up to afterward.
            The story winds its way toward the occasion of a wedding between cris and dave, though one that feels foredoomed. When a betrayal is revealed, the doubts are heightened. What happens next is … let’s leave it at that. Pena will take you somewhere you probably – likely – did not expect to go.
            These characters are strangers when it comes down to it, from each other and from themselves. I can’t be sure that’s what Pena is endeavoring to tell us utmost, but such a conclusion is inescapable.
            Director Clark is a friend of the playwright’s, and Pena himself was present during early rehearsals, so it can be safely assumed that his vision is faithfully translated to the stage. It’s done so with an industrious cast in support of Lone (though this is really an ensemble piece). I only wish that Michael Amira Temple, who’s always a dynamic presence onstage, had more to do.
            Though there was a delay in the house on opening night, “The Strangers” proceeded evidently with all its technical enhancements intact, including sound, lighting and fog effects that factor into the production in a startling and revealing way.
            Here’s acknowledging the contributions of Sammy Webster (lighting design) and Syd Showers (assistant lighting design), Steven Leffue (sound design) and technical director Chad Ryan.
            “The Strangers” is a bit strange, but as with innovative that’s a relative term. Even if it’s trying too mightily to be meaningful, it’s an adventurous slice of theater. It’s also a bold step forward for Chalk Circle Collective.
            “The Strangers” runs through Nov. 30 at the Old Town Theatre.

There's nothing like a selfie among friends, as here, in "Rent."          Dupla Photography / Jason Sullivan

            Nearly 30 years after its Off Broadway premiere, Jonathan Larson’s “Rent” is enjoying an enduring lease on life.
            Just take San Diego: In 2022, the “25th Anniversary Farewell Tour” of the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical visited the Civic Theatre downtown. You just had to know that this beloved show wasn’t going anywhere. More recently, San Diego State’s Musical Theatre program staged “Rent” last May. Now, in a partnership with Diversionary Theatre, New Village Arts in Carlsbad is presenting its “Rent” for a 100-seat audience, with the University Heights theater’s own 100-seat production due next spring.
            Me, I’ve seen “Rent” four or five times – the first at La Jolla Playhouse back in ’96 when the rock musical made its West Coast premiere. NVA’s “Rent” directed with spark by Kym Pappas is the first time I’ve experienced the show in more intimate confines – a plus – and the first time I’ve experienced it with recorded music instead of a live band on stage – a negative, but not as mitigating as I’d imagined.
            But here’s the irony part: New Village’s “Rent” with its exuberant, sincerely committed young cast is, to my memory, the most emotionally raw presentation of the musical I’ve seen. So why was I less affected emotionally than I’ve been in the past? It has to be because I’ve seen “Rent” enough times now that I know it well, its joys and its tragedies. I foresee them, I expect them and I’m braced for them.
            It’s come to be that way, for me, even with musicals far older than “Rent” – like “Fiddler on the Roof,” which I saw again, for the umpteenth time, this past summer at Moonlight Amphitheatre.
            This admission of stoicism is not a reflection on “Fiddler” or on NVA’s “Rent,” an in-many-ways electric production that is true to the core of Larson’s adaptation of the opera “La boheme.” Nor is it a commentary on “Rent” possibly being “dated”: though set in NYC’s East Village at the height of the AIDS crisis, “Rent” has lost none of its urgency, because it’s not about a time period or a thing, it’s about people. Friends. Lovers. People who care about each other just as we care about those who are close to us, those who reach out to us and we reach out to.
            What struck me most about seeing “Rent” again, however, was the incredibly nuanced and beautiful music and lyrics Larson created. Here’s the score that can stir your inner being, as with the tender “Without You” and the timeless “Seasons of Love,” but also entertain for laughter – “Tango Maureen,” for one, the recurring “Christmas Bells” sequences for another. I’d forgotten how rousing “What You Own” can be and how ideal “La Vie Boheme,” sung by the company, is in capturing the spirit of these interconnected human beings in their raging, difficult lives.
            That’s why I didn’t miss the live-band-onstage as I much as I thought I would. It’s the songs. Just the songs. I was reminded – as I am every time I attend a performance of “Rent” – of what we lost when Larson passed away the night before his show began previews Off Broadway.
            Much of the success of NVA’s scaled-down production goes not only to Pappas, for whom “Rent” is a personal favorite, but to choreographer Tamara Rodriguez, music director Elena Correia and scenic designer Christopher Scott Murillo, who has taken advantage of every possible space in the theater to honor a setting that is typically accomplished with towering scaffolding and more.
            There must have been some first-time “Rent” audience members at New Village Friday night, but from the general crowd reaction, I suspect they were few.
            Still, for the uninitiated: Mark Cohen (Brennen Winspear) and Roger Davis (Josh Bradford) are roommates in a flat that erstwhile friend/current landlord Benny (Juwan Stanford) is threatening to evict them from. (The show’s title song reflects their predicament.) Mark is an aspiring filmmaker who carries a movie camera around like a security blanket for his loneliness (though the likable Winspear portrays him with such good-natured awaremess that he doesn’t seem that lonely). Roger, a singer/songwriter in quest of that one great song, knows that this might be his legacy – he has been diagnosed HIV-positive.
            Roger’s circumstances aren’t changed, but his heart is, when he meets downstairs neighbor Mimi Marquez (Lena Ceja), a lightning bolt of vivacity and animation in spite of her drug addiction. This relationship is paralleled by that between gay professor Tom Collins (Van Angelo) and the charming, cross-dressing Angel (Xavier J. Bush).
            Back to Mark: He’s been dumped by performance artist/activist Maureen Johnson (Shannon McCarthy, savoring the showiest part in the musical) for an uptight attorney (Eboni Muse, right there with McCarthy in the savoring-the-part department.)
            Everyone’s destined to some extent for moments of exigence, reckonings of self and at worst loss. Larson’s sensitive score carries them through the choppy waters from which not everyone will surface intact.
            Thirty years on, the Maureen solo performance (“Over the Moon”) feels excessive and the first act of “Rent” in general way too long. There are still enough highlights of jubilant anarchy and sanguine philosophy (not to mention jaundiced fun with the holidays, Christmas most of all) that the show neither lags nor sinks inexorably into its sadness.
            Director Pappas has plainly given her cast the freedom to take their characters to the emotional edge, seen and heard by all but with Ceja (case in point the fervent “Out Tonight”) and Angelo (brokedown as brokedown can be in the aftermath of Angel’s death) in particular. Bradford’s Roger and Winspear’s Mark are right up there with the best Rogers and Marks I’ve seen with this show.
            All right. I’ve seen “Rent” yet again. So I’m done. Oh, wait a minute: Diversionary’s “Rent” will be here before I know it. (It opens next May.) The season of love stretches on and on. In “daylights, in sunsets, in midnights” and beyond.
            “Rent” runs through Dec. 24 at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad.

Joanna "JoJo" Levesque as Tess McGill in the "Working Girl" musical.                 Photo by Rich Soublet II

            La Jolla Playhouse’s world-premiere musical adaptation of “Working Girl” may look like the 1988 film, a likable and successful rom-com disguised as a female empowerment trip, but it sounds like Cyndi Lauper.
            Does it ever!
            Lauper, with a few friends contributing, wrote the poppy music and storytelling lyrics for this new show directed by Christopher Ashley (the outgoing Playhouse artistic director’s last gig at LJP before moving on to Roundabout Theatre Company in NYC). I can’t recall the last time I heard a stage musical written by one composer that was as signature identifiable as this one. From the opening “Something More” to the triumphant “Working Girl" title song, Lauper’s brand of upbeat, catchy-chorus “eighties-ness” resounds. “Working Girl” the musical’s battle-cry is not “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” but “Girls Just Want to Have Fun (and Respect).”
            That’s where the author of the show’s book, Theresa Rebeck, comes in. While the “Working Girl” film was plenty of fun, remember that it was written by a man (Kevin Wade) and directed by a man (Mike Nichols). Rebeck, an experienced playwright and creator for television  (“Smash”) and film as well, has kept “Working Girl” in the 1980s but has elevated its conscience and enlightened its point of view for 2025 audiences. Her script pays more than lip service to the empowering of a heroine. Rebeck’s Tess McGill (played in La Jolla by Joanna “JoJo” Levesque of Broadway’s “Moulin Rouge”) doesn’t stand up for herself in a man’s world all alone – in this “Working Girl” she’s supported by a cadre of fellow Wall Street support staffers united against those who take them for granted and who refuse to value them as not only women but individuals. This isn’t just “Working Girl,” it’s “Working Girls,” as we are reminded at the end of the show.
            The Cyn character, Tess’ BFF memorably portrayed in the “Working Girl” film by Joan Cusack, is a far more prominent, and serious, presence in Rebeck’s adaptation. This Cyn (Ashley Blanchet) is again Tess’ confidante and protector, but like her friend she’s strong, proactive and not to be underestimated.
            The other secretaries are game for having fun with absent boss Katharine’s high-priced, excessive wardrobe closet in one of the musical’s best scenes, but they’re also loyal (well, except for one) compatriots in Tess’ deception to get ahead in the corporate arena, a deception that as in the film is completely justifiable.
            Even the story’s antagonist, the ubiquitous Katharine Parker, is given a makeover in the “Working Girl” musical. While Sigourney Weaver was just about perfection in the role on screen, her character was unlikable, even mean, and her ultimate comeuppance in the film just as mean back at her. (“Get your bony ass out of my sight,” she was told off.) Rebeck gives Lesley Rodriguez Kritzer plentiful opportunity to be snippy and dismissive of Tess (and many others), but there’s far more comedy in the character onstage – she’s almost likable in spite of her faux superiority and robbery of Tess’ grand acquisitions idea. She isn’t banished from the story’s climax with a humiliating insult either.
            Rebeck’s supportive portrayals of the women of “Working Girl” are expressed in song as well, with Lauper giving Tess numbers in which to assert herself, like “Something More” and “When the Penny Drops” and of course the closing, anthemic “Picture It” which finds even the mostly clueless male characters singing along.
            A cool touch, by the by: The accompanying all-woman band at the Playhouse is led by Julie McBride and features Alex “Goldie” Golden on keyboards, Elena Bonomo on drums, Vivi Rama on bass and Meg Toohey on guitars.
            The two principal male characters in this “Working Girl” differ from the film, with mixed results. In the movie Harrison Ford did his best with the rather bland Jack Trainer role, the man Tess collaborates with and finds love with too; here, Jack (Anoop Desai) is from Minnesota but of Indian heritage, and he has much more personality and sense of humor, and more to do.  His cocktail-drinking Act One “Can’t Trust Nobody” is exceeded by the dance-powered “Dream in Royalty” in the second act, both of which broadly belie the image of the money-grubbing Wall Street suit who has no real idea how to enjoy himself away from the market floor.
             Then there’s Rebeck’s reimagination of Mick, the two-timer Tess is involved with. At La Jolla Mick is an aspiring, long-locked rock singer and guitarist – his more-to-do is superfluous. I could have lived without either of the two numbers (“Staring You Right in the Face” and the cringy “Get You Hot”) to which he is central.
            The mini-scenes with Katharine, the “victim” of a skiing accident, in hospitals across the Pond are a delight. So is her marvelously conceived accident scene before them.
            Like a lot of new musicals – and many new plays – “Working Girl” is longer than it needs to be right now and could stand some pruning in spite of how consistently enjoyable it is. Minimizing Mick would be a start. Maybe give Jack one song but not two.
            This staging is technically stunning: AMP Scenography featuring Erica Jiaying Zhang brings electric and seamless transitions onstage from board room to Staten Island Ferry to Katharine’s lush bedroom. Hana S. Kim’s projection design resurrects the glittering steel reaching to the sky and the deep blue harbor of the Big Apple in the late ‘80s. The citified “Working Girl” logo is detailed down to the point of having glowing automobiles moving along beneath it. The city that never sleeps, you know.
            The power suits worn by all the Wall Street types are suitably ‘80s -- they sure look anachronistic by the standards of today's post-COVID, relaxed office attire policies. Linda Cho is this production’s costume designer, with Charles G. LaPointe responsible for (‘80s) hair design and wigs.
            Eye-popping throughout, “Working Girl” already looks like a Broadway show. We’ll see what the future brings.
            Levesque does well as both the big-hair Tess and the aspiring-big-shot Tess, though I didn’t feel any tangible sparks between the character and the Jack character. Her most believable relationship is with Blanchet’s Cyn. They’re a comfortable pairing. Rebeck was intuitive and creative enough to emphasize their deep friendship and to make the lessons the two characters learn together more important than Tess finding her true man.
            I don’t know whether this was intentional when it came to casting, but in “Working Girl” the musical Kritzer’s Katharine and Levesque’s Tess are about the same height, compared to Sigourney Weaver towering three inches over Melanie Griffith in the movie. But regardless, it speaks well to the thought of the two female characters being equals, even if one of them doesn’t want them to be.
            More than a few lines from the original film are preserved in this new musical, among them Cyn’s telling Tess, as a cautionary realization, that dancing around in her underwear “doesn’t make me Madonna.”  Some gems you don’t try to re-polish even when you change mediums.
            “Working Girl” runs through Dec. 14 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Theatre.