Wilfred Paloma (left) and Wil Bethmann in "To My Girls."                                               Xing Photo Studio

            Coursing beneath “To My Girls’” blended margaritas and baring of skin and one wild attempt at a DIY Spice Girls dress-up video is some serious baring of soul. It’s not that playwright JC Lee’s high-spirited gathering of three gay millennials for a Palm Springs getaway isn’t Party Central personified. It is. But like most parties this one doesn’t go exactly as planned.
            Many critics pontificating about Lee’s 2013 play, which is enjoying its San Diego premiere at Diversionary Theatre, have in doing so referenced Mart Crowley’s 1968 drama “The Boys in the Band.” That play also revolved around a party, this one a birthday gathering set on the Upper East Side. While “The Boys in the Band” found its characters practically at odds with their sexuality, those in “To My Girls” are proud of theirs – their noisy conflicts and intense self-examinations stem from their faults and frailties as individuals, not just as gay men. The two-hour play, directed at Diversionary with buoyancy and thought by Jesse Marchese, manages well the balance between the outrageous and the interior.
            What the principals of “To My Girls” contend with is in large part a disconnect between queer generations, the millennial characters confronted by a testy boomer (the man who’s rented them the Palm Springs digs) and by a Gen-Zer brought home from a bar. This coupled with the interpersonal dramas going on makes for a VERY busy script, though except for a closing 15 minutes or so that feels tacked on everything coalesces in a diverting manner.
            The party-giver in Lee’s play is Curtis (Wil Bethmann), an Instagram influencer who loves his “girls,” but indications from the very start are that he loves himself and his impulses even more. The first to arrive at the Palm Springs pad (superlatively conceived by Mathys Herbert right down to the hanging chair, wet bar and artsy portraits of Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli)) is Castor (Wilfred Paloma), whose uber-flamboyance hides a vulnerability and no paucity of hurt. Leo (Zack King) is a propounder of inter-relational and social media wisdom and, like Castor, someone of depth and disappointments.
            So you have Curtis (white), Castor (Asian-American) and Leo (Black), bound by friendship and history, sharing their queerness and general age but with very different existential perspectives.
            Bernie (Frank DiPalermo), the owner of the house, reveals himself to be a two-time Trump voter, instantly alienating him from the others, though halfway through “To My Girls” it could be said that everyone’s unreasonable to some extent. It’s less politics and more of that aforementioned generational divide from which the tensions roil.
            Omar (Jocorey Mitchell) is the young man brought to the house by Castor, and besides being the youngest man in the room he’s the most accepting and maybe even the sharpest.
            In between its revelries “To My Girls” caroms through its characters’ confrontations, misunderstandings, accusations, recriminations and reconciliations. The playwright’s conceit is that the party never truly stops and the action is weighted more toward entertainment than preaching.
            Still, the quintessential moment of the play is the recitation of a letter, one written and read in a spotlight by Castor. It’s here that Lee may be saying what he wants to say most of all about gay culture and relationships at their most complex.
            It’s fitting that this is Paloma’s scene, for over the two acts his is the production’s most hilarious and also most tender performance.
            Make no mistake, “To My Girls” is party time … but there’s time made for much more.
            “To My Girls” runs through Dec. 7 at Diversionary Theatre in University Heights.

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.

Richard Bermudez as Dr. Henry Jekyll, the character's better half.                      Karli Cadel Photography

            It takes nearly an hour and a half for Mr. Hyde to show his murderous self, but when he does in San Diego Musical Theatre’s graphic production of “Jekyll & Hyde the Musical,” look out. Put it this way  -- Jason Voorhees would be admiring.
            Stage blood is spilled and splattered liberally, while one particular killing is gasp-worthy. I come to praise SDMT’s production, not to bury it, for these visceral effects, without which this Frank Wildhorn (music)/Leslie Bricusse (book and lyrics) show would be stylishly costumed and somewhere between melodramatic and lurid – no more.
            This staging has something else remarkably going for it: a balls-out performance in the schizophrenic lead role by Richard Bermudez. Not only is he a fabulous vocalist but the sheer athleticism he invokes to inhabit the horrible hide of Edward Hyde is nothing short of prodigious.
            Bermudez’s performance rises above a show that’s a dark and eerie tale (based somewhat on Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”) but elongated  principally by the presence of standard-issue ballads given to its female characters – Jekyll’s fiancée Emma Carew (Dacara Seward) and the archetypical prostitute with a heart of gold, or at least a good heart, Lucy Harris (Melissa Musial).
            On the other hand, the opening number “I Need to Know” and the telling “This Is the Moment,” both rendered with muscular conviction by Bermudez, are essential dives into the character of the English doctor whose humanitarian motives ultimately undo him and wreak mayhem.
            This production boasts a huge cast, and it’s the ensemble numbers, choreographed for the small SDMT stage with ingenuity by Luke H. Jacobs, that are the most inspired in “Jekyll & Hyde” Case in point: the first-act romp inside the Red Rat, where the ladies-for-hire reside and where during “Bring on the Men,” Musial brings to mind Madeline Kahn’s Lili Von Shtupp in “Blazing Saddles.” Another highlight is the second-act-opening “Murder” (no context needed), with the company collectively expressing the shock over the gory crimes committed by some mystery fiend.
            That second act is far superior to the first frankly because it’s action-packed, and shorter. Even with its overall length, however, “Jekyll & Hyde” is an entertaining thrill ride in the hands of director Omri Schein, a versatile artist who has a smart way with material like this.
            This production affords some gifted actors character parts they can sink their teeth into as well: Tanner Vydos as Jekyll’s loyal and steady lawyer, Utterson; Ruff Yeager playing Emma’s father (and Jekyll’s reticent ally) Sir Danvers Carew; Cameron Blankenship as Lucy’s despicable pimp Spider.
            Everyone’s authentically costumed by Chong Mi Land, with compatible hair and wig design by Monique Hanson. Bermudez alone has hair to spare.
            I could fantasize during this performance about how SDMT’s “Jekyll & Hyde” would play if a.) it were staged in a larger theater and b.) it had the benefit of a live orchestra instead of recorded music. Bigger and better.
            Yet the smallish confines position Hyde, at his most out of control, so close to audience members I could see some of them recoiling. You wouldn’t have that at, say, the Civic Theatre. (This show did play there, in 2012, by the by.)
             I don’t know how many tickets are still available for “Jekyll & Hyde the Musical” at SDMT this Halloween weekend – it closes on Sunday. If there are any, that’s one way to get the you-know-what scared out of you.
            “Jekyll & Hyde the Musical” runs through Nov. 2 at San Diego Musical Theatre in Kearny Mesa.

John Rubinstein in "Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground."                            Photograph by Maria Baranova

            There are certain protocols one is expected to observe when in the audience for the performance of a play, among them not applauding spoken lines throughout. That’s for afterward, or in some cases if warranted after a particularly impactful scene when the house lights darken. Or, if absolutely impossible to suppress, after a main character’s empowered or passionate moment of monologue.
            But a very discernible sense of the audience wanting to burst into applause, and to do so many times, hovered above the North Coast Repertory theatergoers last night during John Rubinstein’s performance of “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground.” I was among them, scarcely able to hold back. The one-person-show script written by Richard Hellesen and drawn in part on words written or spoken before crowds by Dwight D. Eisenhower is an intended enlightenment on the military hero and 34th president of the United States, but also a searing indictment of the America today under Donald Trump.
            As Rubinstein told me in an interview a few weeks ago for the San Diego Union-Tribune, Ike is a largely overlooked figure in presidential history today, known by most for coining the term “military industrial complex.” There was more – much more – to the man, Rubinstein said with adamance.
            So there was.
         Over two hours and two acts, Hellesen and Rubinstein show us that Eisenhower was an avowed moderate politically but a man of stout principle and unwavering belief in the virtue possible in America, a nation where differences didn’t have to create enemies, where high-minded truths were celebrated not castigated or denied, where a president always put the people above himself.
            What the hell’s happened?
         The San Diego premiere of this much-produced one-person-show is directed by Peter Ellenstein, who first brought the script to Rubinstein, an accomplished actor on stage, in film and on television. (He broke through as a young man starring in “Pippin” on Broadway; I have followed his career from there to the acclaimed “Children of a Lesser God” film and the “Family” TV series and even, as I joked with him in conversation, a memorable bit in the so-bad-it’s-fun horror flick “The Car.”)
            Rubinstein is 78 now and portraying Eisenhower at age 72 when “This Piece of Ground” is set in 1962 on Ike and Mamie’s farm in Gettysburg, Penn. His is not a quiet, studied oration but a cranky and often passionate performance with Eisenhower even pounding a desk for emphasis at one point. There’s more of the general than the commander-in-chief in this figure on stage, though the script has Rubinstein devoting the first act to the military years and the second act to the presidency.
            As we drop in on Ike at home, he’s rankled about a poll published in a magazine in which historians have rated, top to bottom, U.S. presidents up to the year 1962. He’s been placed at No. 22, a designation defended by the scholars who deem him to be so-so, even mediocre. The magazine folded over to the ratings page becomes Rubinstein’s principal prop during the show; we keep waiting for him to hurl it across the room. He’s too dignified to tear it to pieces.
            The narrative goes that the retired Eisenhower is going to write a book about his years in public service – though he doesn’t really want to. After an opening phone call to that effect with his book editor, he can’t help himself but dictate into a tape recorder just the kind of self-analysis and candor that such a book might include if written.
            As Eisenhower rolls through the years, from growing up in Kansas with a strict father and a religious mother (who hated war, by the way, but always supported her son), to entering West Point, to the valor and terrors of World War II and onto into the campaign and presidential years, Rubinstein is tireless and ever on point, moving here and there around the comfortable living room set by Marty Burnett. A backdrop “window” shows the bucolic Pennsylvania farm country and the skies above that darken as a storm beckons, then arrives. Facilitating the trip through history and giving it visual enhancement are strategic projections by Joe Huppert of the historical personages and family members of Ike’s past.
            I acknowledge having known very little about Eisenhower when I sat down in the theater. He was supreme commander of the Allied forces, yes I knew that. He was the impetus for the interstate highway system, I knew that too. Not much more. So for me, and likely for many others, “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground” is an illuminating history lesson and certainly a portrait of a man who, from a personal standpoint, they either don’t know or understand or even remember well.
            Like a No. 22 on a list of 35, right?
            Not being a historian myself, I don’t know whether Hellesen’s script idealizes Eisenhower in addition to profiling him. That may be so. Copious research would be needed to make a judgment either way.
            But I will say this: I’m thinking of Dwight David Eisenhower today far, far more than I ever have before, and my curiosity about him and his life has grown substantially.
            Hellesen does not portray Eisenhower as a man without flaws or failures during his two lives of public service to his country. If he had, no amount of commitment brought to the role by Rubinstein could give this play the weight of importance that it has.
            Then there’s that inescapable parallel between the Eisenhower principles and the unprincipled presidency of today. It’s likely that Hellesen was fully cognizant of that parallel in writing “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground.” Sometimes, he may be trying to tell us, history does not repeat itself – it sinks to the depths. We can only hope that someone else who truly loves America for its inherent good and for the good that its people can be, comes along to lead it, and honor it.
            “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground” runs through Nov. 23 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach.