Left to right: Fernando Vega, Vanessa Orozco and Luis Sherlinee in "Somewhere Over the Border." Karli Cadel Photography

            The crucial moment in Cygnet Theatre’s production of the musical “Somewhere Over the Border” isn’t musical at all: It’s when a frightened young woman, hiding in the back of a truck, holds her breath and lies dead-still while immigration/border officers inspect the vehicle. Reina has journeyed nearly 3,000 miles from El Salvador to Tijuana, Mexico, and this muffled, predatory inspection will determine her fate.
            “Somewhere Over the Border,” written by Brian Quijada, is based on the true story of his own mother, also named Reina, who left her son (him) behind in El Salvador to seek a better life for them both in the imagined freedom, beauty and prosperity of the USA. In a whimsical conceit Quijada chose to tell this story as an adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” complete with a young girl seeking home and three characters with more than passing resemblance to Baum’s Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion accompanying her on her trek to salvation.
            References to “Oz” are more than just Easter eggs here. Banana farmer Cruz (Luis Sherlinee) wants to attend university and enhance his unchallenged brain in so doing; woeful Silvano (Edward Padilla) has a broken heart after being separated from his family, now living in the U.S.: habit-wearing nun Leona (Luzm Ortiz) would rather be a rock ‘n’ roll star … if she only had the nerve; El Gran Coyote de Tijuana (Fernando Vega, who also plays the narrator/playwright Quijada part) has a booming voice and ostensibly the power to make all the dreamers’ dreams reality; Reina (Vanessa Orozco) has no Toto with her but she’s every bit as doggedly determined as Dorothy Gale. Her desired destination is not the Emerald City but rather the U.S. and a coveted green card.
            Director Carlos Mendoza told me in an interview for the San Diego Union-Tribune that “Somewhere Over the Border” is not so much a story about immigration as it is a story about family and finding home. This makes it more compatible with the themes of the “Oz” book but for me the immigrant’s plight and the risks he, she or they take constitutes the urgency of this show, the musical score for which is underwhelming –same-sounding ballads, overly expository lyrics, and nothing really beyond the title song that is especially memorable.
            The actors are likable. Only Orozco is an impressive vocalist, so thankfully she does the heavy lifting. Crissy Guerrero, portraying Reina’s mother Julia with whom her child has been left, gets two ballads when truly one would have sufficed.
            “Somewhere Over the Border” is also a case of two very different acts. The slow-moving first, which is set in Reina’s El Salvador village, takes far too long to establish that she will sacrifice caring for her young baby in order to seek that better life in America. If you want to get “Wizard of Oz”-ish about it, it didn’t take nearly so long for Dorothy to be swept away from Kansas and down into that magical land over the rainbow. Furthermore, when Reina gets the funds necessary to make the multi-bus-ride trip north and to pay off El Gran Coyote who will facilitate her cross-over, this happens too fast, almost unbelievably so.
            As in “Oz” Reina meets her eventual traveling companions and hears their plights one by one, culminating with their arrival in TJ at the end of the first act.
            The much better, less uneven second act is half the length and more than that it’s gripping and comes with reality checks for Reina. The commentary that playwright Quijada is forwarding about those like his mother who gave up so much for a dream is saturated throughout.
            Very much to its credit, the show does not tie everything up into a big red ribbon at the end nor does it gloss over the terrible trials that would-be immigrants confront.
            A valuable asset to the production is the extensive projection design by Blake McCarty that grounds us not only in locations but in emotional atmosphere. Without these vivid images of Central America, Mexico, Los Angeles and Chicago, “Somewhere Over the Border” would be substantially diminished in impact.
            A live band led by conductor/keyboardist Lyndon Pugeda provides an olio of musical styles, from cumbria to rock and pop, though at times the volume drowned out the singers on stage, in particular Sherlinee in Act One portraying Reina’s brother Adan.
            “Somewhere Over the Border” premiered four years ago at Syracuse Stage, so at this point it is what it is. I can daydream about a tighter, faster moving show, but why?
            What’s important here is the light cast on the immigrant experience. In the current political climate where the top-down message in the USA is “stay the hell out of here” the stories of the real Reina and the Reina of “Somewhere Over the Border” couldn’t be more poignant.
            “Somewhere Over the Border” runs through March 15 at Cygnet’s Joseph Clayes III Theater in Liberty Station.

Norbert Leo Butz and Christina Kirk in "The Recipe."                                             Photo by Rich Soublet II

            No less than Julia Child herself would appreciate the importance of having the right ingredients.
            “The Recipe,” a world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse, has them:
            A playwright, Claudia Shear, who crafted a script based on Bob Spitz’s book “Dearie,” that paints a vivid portrait of the younger Julia Child that not many know about and who was not depicted in the 2009 film “Julie and Julia.”
            A director, Lisa Peterson, at the helm of a brisk, stylish and altogether charming production which closes the Playhouse’s 2025-’26 season.
            Two leads, Christina Kirk as Child and Norbert Leo Butz as her husband Paul, who are irresistible and who enjoy great chemistry onstage. I don’t know what Julia Child was like in real life, but I’d like to think she was very much the woman portrayed by Kirk: independent-minded, fun-loving, stubborn, focused and oh so human in her self-doubts, self-deprecation and frustrations.
            The presentation of “The Recipe” in the Playhouse’s Potiker Theatre is also part of its effectiveness and its appeal. Rachel Hauck’s movable set pieces variously evoke a Smith College dorm room, the swelter of Ceylon, the stuffiness of a conservative Pasadena home and the bon vivant sophistication and adventure of Paris. The coup de grace is the fabulous working kitchen with its wall of gleaming golden pots and pans hung like treasured art that Paul builds at their home there for Julia. It’s all critical to telling her story of discovering who she is by what she is passionate to do.
            It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a theater audience where one could sense the enjoyment patrons were having on opening night. “The Recipe” comes with its laugh lines and moments of glib humor, and the relationship between Julia and Paul that builds over the course of the story is quietly touching and, like Paris itself, tres romantique.
            The lighter, faster-moving first act of “The Recipe” establishes a 20ish Julia McWilliams unimpressed by Smith College academia but gamely wringing fun out of every situation and personal interaction she can. Her eventual secretarial skills and desire to do what she can for the war effort leads her to the otherworld of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) where those around her consider the 6-foot-2, wholly uninhibited woman from Pasadena a fish out of water. But it’s there that she meets a worldly OSS civil servant and artist named Paul Child. After initially being startled by a personality like Julia’s, he becomes infatuated, and who can blame him? Julia McWilliams is just so damned much fun. Anything goes! Try a little opium? Why not? When she and Child do – and its staging is inspired – all barriers between them fall away. They are destined for a life together (even if Julia’s stern, “I-know-what’s-best-for-MY-daughter” dad, played by Michael Park, tries to prevent it).
            Come Act Two, life in Paris and exposure to restaurants there and their rich, exquisite cuisine ignites the creative spark inside the woman who is now Julia Child: She will cook like these French chefs cook! With her husband’s encouragement she enrolls in the Sorbonne. When that experience ends in disappointment, a defeated Julia is buoyed by meeting through a cooking club Simone Beck (called Simca in “The Recipe”) and through her Louisette Bertholle. Simca (Jill Ambramovitz) and Louise (Saisha Talwar), impressed by Julia’s enthusiasm and sheer audacity, persuade her to work with them on a cookbook.
            This will become the definitive “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”
            There are, in “The Recipe,” flinty personal complications between Julia and her collaborators, and Julia’s marriage to Paul suffers its own stresses. In the second act, we see a Julia unlike the earlier Julia, her devil-may-care overcome by failures and fits of temper and her own insatiable drive to be who she wants to be.
            The wrap-up, the resolution of the pitfalls and conflicts, is tender and intuitive. Julia Child sees the path of her future life and career; it comes with humility, but we know she will carry with her unflagging spirit and joy as she becomes the Julia Child so many remember from “The French Chef” on television.
            If “The Recipe” has any shortcoming, it would be its two-hour, 45-minute length. Even for a play as entertaining as this one, with its likable characters and bright storytelling and jazzy original music by Andre Pluess, it is a little long. One choreographed, non-speaking sequence in the second act showing the three cookbook collaborators busy in the kitchen could be trimmed or even spliced and nothing would be lost. But in trying to envision a shorter iteration of “The Recipe” I quibbled with myself in the trying.
            Some really good dishes take their time to cook. You can’t rush them.
            Kirk and Butz both give outstanding performances. They’re as believable as could be as two people in love with and supportive of each other; and it’s their portrayal of Julia and Paul Child’s ability to embrace life with all its serious crossroads and silly misadventures that make “The Recipe” as delicious and satisfying as it is.
            “The Recipe” runs through March 22 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Sheila & Hughes Potiker Theatre. Limited seats remain available.

Katie Holmes and Alexander Hurt in "Hedda Gabler."                                           Photo by Rich Soublet II

            Hedda Gabler is among the most fascinating characters in all of theater, someone whose cerebral wheels are always turning, a woman of passions and impulses that won’t be restrained.
            She is also, as created by Henrik Ibsen, an enigmatic protagonist that challenges critical analysis – and yet scholars and theater critics (myself included) can’t resist the challenge.
            The Hedda in the Old Globe’s production of “Hedda Gabler,” a new adaptation by Erin Cressida Wilson from a translation by Anne-Charlotte Hanes Harvey, so commands the evolving drama that all of the principals in her sphere – her ambitious but oft-clueless husband, the men who lust for her and strive to overpower her, the anxious onetime schoolmate – are either pawns in her mind games or foredoomed supplicants of sorts. Only when one of them seizes power from her does Hedda founder, and that will be sudden and everlasting.
            Barry Edelstein directs a “Hedda Gabler” that moves purposefully along over the course of one 100-minute act. Though the play has its noisier confrontations, it is a talky affair, and it’s to the director’s credit that the tension therein is consistent and taut.
            Katie Holmes, whom Edelstein directed in Anna Ziegler’s “The Wanderers” three years ago at Roundabout Theatre in New York, is a charismatic, contemporary-seeming Hedda Gabler, the latter accomplished not only through Holmes’ layered performance but because of Wilson’s script, the language and nuances of which transcend the period costumes and manners of late-19th-century Kristiania, Norway. Holmes’ Hedda, trapped rather than lapped in the luxury of the Tesman household, is playful one minute, cruel the next, either impetuously tinkling at the piano or taunting or tempting her would-be lovers.
            For the duration of the play Hedda’s arena is the Tesman drawing room, thoughtfully realized onstage by scenic designer Mark Wendland. The conspicuous, ornate furnace/stove is the only thing that towers over her; a couch that threatens to stretch the length of the room might as well represent the gulf between the newly married George Tesman (Charlie Barnett), a babe in his own woods, and the flaring, fiery (when she wants to be) Hedda.
            This production is accompanied by recurring piano music performed by Korrie Yamaoka, a not altogether effective device in my mind. I found its presence intrusive more than atmospheric.
            As always at the Globe, costume design by David I. Reynoso is ideal to the time and the storytelling.
            In support of Holmes, Alexander Hurt is intensity personified as the neurotic writer Ejlert Lovborg in whose spell a frantic Thea Elvsted (Hedda’s former schoolmate, played by Celeste Arias) is captive. Alfredo Narciso is calculating, blackmailing Judge Brack. Saidah Arrika Ekulona (as George’s aunt) and Katie MacNichol (as Berte the housekeeper) round out a steady cast.
            This is Holmes’ show, however, and she joins a distinguished list of actors who’ve portrayed Hedda Gabler onstage including Maggie Smith, Glenda Jackson and Cate Blanchett and, more recently, Ruth Wilson and Tessa Thompson. It’s appropriate that her performance never reels out of control given that Hedda herself seeks and prizes control, especially over others, as insatiably as she does. If Holmes’ Hedda is unsympathetic, that’s how so many have viewed Ibsen’s character for decades. Considering the Tesman household it’s hard to begrudge her her boredom at the least and perhaps not her burning machinations, either. One literal burning is paramount.
            Wilson’s Globe-commissioned adaptation adds some humor to the story and updated language somewhat suggests a “Hedda Gabler” in the here and now. An exasperated George even lets out a “WTF!” (but unabbreviated) at one point. The same could be exclaimed by Hedda if she took a long look around her claustrophobic post-“honeymoon” home and pondered the price of aristocracy.
            “Hedda Gabler” runs through March 22 at the Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park.

Robert J. Townsend and Autumn Kirkpatrick in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." Karli Cadel Photography

            How to succeed in enjoying San Diego Musical Theatre’s production of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”:
            First, keep in mind that this musical-comedy satire of corporate culture in the ‘60s is a period piece, a portrait of its time, a thankfully bygone era when men in suits strutted like roosters and women were there for the plucking.
            Second, though the lyrics to songs like “Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm” and most of all “A Secretary Is Not a Toy” are cringe-worthy even if you’re not a woman, musical theater heavyweight Frank Loesser’s score is a lively and tuneful one. There’s only one number – “I Believe In You,” which became a favorite of Vegas-ish lounge singers – that most people remember, but neither is this 1961 show undermined by syrupy, swooning ballads of the kind lessers that Loesser composed.
            And third, give yourself over to director Omri Schein’s impeccable comic instincts, responsible here for making “How to Succeed …” an entertaining romp in spite of its length (well over two and a half hours) and its being so retro it makes the “gender dynamics” of television’s chauvinistic “Mad Men” look enlightened. Schein himself is a master of onstage antics and physical comedy, and at SDMT he’s brought out the best in a large cast that is right in lockstep with him.
            Oh, and on the subject of lockstep, a fourth how-to-enjoy: choreography by Xavier J. Bush that makes you feel as if you’re in a much bigger theater.
            This was my first time seeing “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” onstage. Prior I’d only seen the 1967 film that starred Robert Morse as J. Pierrepont Finch, the window washer-turned-mailroom clerk who follows the advice of a book titled “How to Succeed” etc. etc. on his way zooming up the corporate ladder at the World Wide Wicket Company. Can’t say I remembered much about it, either.
            The smash-hit stage musical is based on a novel by Shepherd Mead and was written by Abe Burrows, Willie Gilbert and Jack Weinstock. It was Burrows who reportedly opined that glamour was “the indefinable something about a girl with a big bosom.” There’s some context for you.
            But “How to Succeed” the musical would win a Tony and the Pulitzer for Drama (!). Just keep telling yourself “It’s satire.”
            At SDMT, Frankie Errington occupies the role of Finch with spirit and buoyancy. They also succeed, if you will, in maintaining a likability in Finch even as the ambitious and manipulative character exploits others on the way upward. “How to Succeed” is a welcome onstage return for Errington who hasn’t performed since 2019.
            Jasmine January’s becoming one of the most dependable character actors in town, and she’s a standout as Rosemary, the charming secretary who dreams of sharing a New Rochelle mansion with “Ponty.” The show’s other major female part belongs to Autumn Kirkpatrick as Hedy LaRue, whose very name itself is a character description. She’s Burrows’ “indefinable something,” a total bombshell caricature, but props to Kirkpatrick for a game and winning comedic performance that has nuances.
            The presence of Robert J. Townsend (as World Wide Wicket President J.B. Biggley) is a boon to any production given his sonorous vocals and seasoned pro’s experience. Same with Sandy Campbell in the granted, underutilized role of Biggley’s secretary, Miss Jones.
            If there’s an antagonist in the story it’s Biggley’s weaselly nephew Bud Frump. Zane Camacho savors every moment indulging Frump’s machinations.
            Everyone in the World Wide Wicket secretarial pool as well as the guys in suits is turned out beautifully in bright ‘60s colors by costume designer Patricia Lutz. She’s even got them looking great in the inane, out-of-nowhere pirate number (“Yo-Ho-Ho”) that arrives late in the storytelling. Scenic designer Mike Buckley, too, created a mobile and flexible set that can facilitate opening-and-closing elevator doors one minute and men’s room sinks the next.
            I’d be remiss if I didn’t applaud San Diego Musical Theatre for its new seating that has replaced those former uncomfortable chairs. This was especially appreciated during a long show like “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”
            “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” runs through March 1 at San Diego Musical Theatre in Kearny Mesa.

Sarah Alida LeClair and Timothy Benson co-star in "Audition Sides."    Photo courtesy of Riot Productions

            You could say that Sarah Alida LeClair’s “Audition Sides” is about two potentially terrifying experiences. One, auditioning for a part. Two, being thrown together with an-ex lover … when you both are married to someone else.
            So there’s no paucity of tension in this 65-minute piece first seen onstage during the 2024 San Diego International Film Festival.
            LeClair just wound up a three-performance engagement of “Audition Sides” at Moxie Theatre directed by Rhiannon McAfee. The Rolando space will be the production home this year for Riot Productions, for which LeClair is artistic director.
            Hopefully “Audition Sides,” which explores the audition process in all its heavy anxiety and, come to think of it, relationships in all their heavy anxiety, will see another stage one day now that the brief Moxie staging has concluded. For anyone in theater, it’s undoubtedly relatable. (I could tell from the reactions of some people in the Sunday matinee audience.). For others, the complexities of love, which are many, quickly become the thrust of the story.
            LeClair (as The Woman) and Timothy Benson, who plays The Man, find themselves as audition partners, but we soon learn that their interpersonal history runs far deeper. The stopping-and-starting of the scene they’re rehearsing turns out to be just a pretext for an escalating confrontation about their past romance, their present circumstances and whatever future they might share … as friends, as lovers, as nothing at all.
            Comic relief is provided by Josalyn Johnson as the audition proctor who, to the actors/lovers’ irritation, becomes part of the drama whether they like it or not.
            The auditioning couple’s interactions run the gamut from anger to tenderness, a reflection certainly of so many people’s navigations of love especially when they’re roiled by injured feelings, miscommunication and uncertainty.
            LeClair has said that the premise for “Audition Sides” stemmed from her understanding of the fraught but enduring romance between 19th-century musician Clara Schumann (wife of Robert) and composer Johannes Brahms. As LeClair called them in the “Audition Sides” program notes “two people who in their brilliance and artistic hearts were isolated in the world and had found each other at a moment when it made no sense to be together, too broken to find a way, searching for other forms of love and stability in their lives but who would truly never find what they had in each other with anybody else.”
            Maybe The Woman and The Man in the audition room had it easy by comparison.

What's behind "The Apiary" at New Village Arts?             Photo by Jason Sullivan / Dupla Photography

            As literature, the influence and impact of science-fiction as a genre is unimpeachable: Asimov. Bradbury. Ursula K. Le Guin and Philip K. Dick. Sci-fi as a genre on the screen is practically as old as cinema itself, from Georges Melies’ silent “A Trip to the Moon” through the original “The Day the Earth Stood Still” to “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the upcoming Spielberg aliens thriller “Disclosure Day.”
            As theater? Well, not so much. Jordan Harrison’s “Marjorie Prime”? Thomas Gibbons’ “Uncanny Valley”? Meh.
            On the written page, science-fiction world-building can be meticulous in detail and technology and at the same time liberated, if the author chooses, from conventional narrative. It’s conducive to deep thought and the escapist imagination that only books can provide. In film, its visuals can inspire awe and dazzle, catalyzing emotions with sight and sound.
            What makes sci-fi sci-fi doesn’t seem to work very well onstage, and Kate Douglas “The Apiary” doesn’t, either. It’s talky and buzzy (my only bee pun, I promise) in only a techie sense, its characters underdeveloped and far less interesting than the bees they’re concerned with.
            New Village Arts tries strenuously to overcome these inherent deficiencies with its production of “The Apiary” directed by Kristianne Kurner. Translucent walls created by Santa Ana-based Kingspan Light + Air in the hands of NVA’s design team facilitate what looks like an actual apiary on the Carlsbad theater’s stage; sound effects by Miki Vale and Michael Wogulis’ projections successfully present the illusion that bees are in the house. The cast (Michelle Caravia, Adelaida Martinez, Milena Philips and Nio Russell) is grounded in the speculative – and more than slightly preposterous – tale that Douglas is trying to tell.
            This is that two science-minded beekeepers 22 years into the future discover a way to stem the rapidly diminishing population of bees by shocking, morally dubious means. Douglas is speculating that what is rare lachryphagy behavior in bees can be taken to an extreme. You’ll have to look that up, as I did.
            Because “The Apiary” is sci-fi, Douglas is empowered to take her premise wherever she wishes. Bending logic, defying accepted science is understood with the idiom. If only her narrative were less expository, her dramatic interactions more dynamic. At just less than an hour and a half, the production proceeds ploddingly, and the inevitable twist to the discovery that comes is underwhelming – I expected something that would shake the world beyond the story’s insulated apiary.
            Nio Russell’s multiple characters, freed from the one-note personalities and dry explanations of the beekeepers’ realm, are closest to being multi-faceted. They’re also closest to being really human in the way that I wanted all of the principals to be.
            If nothing else, “The Apiary” is a reminder of how precious – and important – bees are to the natural world. It asks us to consider whether any sacrifice, no matter how outrageous, is worth it to preserve their survival.
            “The Apiary” runs through Feb. 22 at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad.

Susan Clausen stars in "Donna Orbits the Moon."                                                      Photo by Ken Jacques

            It’s clear very early on in “Donna Orbits the Moon” that its protagonist, a gooseberry-blondie-baking suburban housewife who sounds like Marge Gunderson from “Fargo,” is not herself. She slaps a fellow shopper at the supermarket. She chases a motorist who cut her off until she runs out of gas. She tries to assault a woman at church with a Bible.
            But what seems at first like major anger management issues turns out to be far more complicated in Scripps Ranch Theatre’s production of Ian August’s 2011 one-person play. When Donna (Susan Clausen) begins hearing the disembodied voice of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin telling her that she “must go up before you can land,” she’s crossed over into, as Rod Serling famously narrated, “the Twilight Zone.”
            The 90-minute-long “Donna Orbits the Moon,” however, is not science fiction or supernatural drama. The truths of Donna’s life and the explanation for her outbursts and mental torment become more and more tangible – and understandable -- as the story unfolds.
            Scripps Ranch Theatre first presented “Donna Orbits the Moon” during the pandemic shutdown of local theaters, with Clausen starring and Kandace Crystal directing in a streaming production. This onstage reiteration also directed by Crystal allows them to enhance the storytelling with sound design and projections (by Ted Leib) in the small theater on the Alliant University campus and to present a more fluid space for the actor to move – a must for a one-person show reliant upon that one-on-one between performer and audience.
            For at least the first half of “Donna Orbits the Moon” Donna’s misbehavior can be interpreted as ornery eccentricity and her delusions fanciful. Even though it isn’t long before her unseen husband Gil begins urging her to “go to the hospital.” (Also unseen are the couple’s grown children Terry and Charley.)
            A seemingly benign trip to the library in search of books on astronaut Aldrin, who was the second man to walk on the moon in 1969, is a pivot point. One children’s book on Aldrin in particular will lead the growingly desperate Donna to the light.
            Though August wrote the play years ago, its lunar shadings are quite relevant, with NASA’s Artemis program planning a mission to orbit the moon sometime this year and the first manned landing since 1972 eyed for next year or in 2028.  Still, the moon and space devices of the script feel somewhat strained to me, and I admittedly puzzled on them until that aforementioned visit to the library Donna makes.
            That aside, this production is a grand achievement for Clausen, whose unflagging energy, knack for comedy and ultimate baring of soul make Donna a fully realized person whose personal trauma is shared by all too many people. To say more would be to undermine the stages of Donna’s journey for audiences at SRT.
            Seeing “Donna Orbit the Moon” reminded me of something Aldrin once said about whether he took for granted his magnificent lunar adventure: “Just imagine looking up at the night sky and seeing the moon and thinking: I have been there.”
            “Donna Orbits the Moon” runs through Feb. 15 at Scripps Ranch Theatre.

Wendy Hovland portrays a health teacher presiding over an important class in "Everything You Need To Know About Abortion In One Hour Or Less."                                        Photo courtesy of TuYo Theatre

            Woe to reside in Oklahoma. Among the 50 states, it’s eighth-lowest in median household income. Its schools are required in social science classes to teach that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. With very, very few exceptions, abortion is banned.
            It’s not alone when it comes to the latter. Currently, Oklahoma is one of 12 U.S. states that enforces strict bans on abortion.
            “Everything You Need To Know About Abortion In One Hour Or Less” is set in an Oklahoma high school. The socially conscious play written by five American playwrights (Justice Hehir, Dena Igusti, Phanesia Pharel, Nia Akilah Robinson and Julia Specht) calling themselves the Wish Collective is being presented in nine locations throughout the county by TuYo Theatre.
            The title’s off just a tad: The production, set on a high school campus in a locked classroom, runs five minutes longer than an hour, and maybe it doesn’t tell us everything we need to know about abortion, but it must come close. Every moment is maximized, as in the play a dauntless health science teacher (Wendy Hovland) and an equally committed athletics coach (Matthew Martinez Hannon) enlighten a group of teen students about women’s productive rights, resources, realities vs. fears and propaganda, and about how to provide presence and emotional support for those having an abortion.
            There’s even a lesson delivered with the help of an overhead projector (remember those?) that demonstrates to the students how deeply into human history abortion has existed and takes them up to where we are today in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. That same overhead projector is utilized to teach the teens about medical resources and referrals. On the interpersonal side, students are enlisted to role-play, to learn how to care for each other in abortion scenarios.
            The content is open and frank. The human drama in the play beneath all the teaching and myth-busting emerges in the back stories of the coach and of one of the young students. A little more would add some needed theatricality to the play, though admittedly in an hour there isn’t a lot of time for character expansion.
            The young actors are quite believable. They could be high school teens anywhere in America, not just in Oklahoma. If there’s anything at all that strains credibility it’s that not one cell phone, in any of their hands, is ever seen. But then maybe these fictional kids were asked to stow them before class. The listening was and is too important.
            On the evening I attended a performance, at Bayfront Charter High School in Chula Vista, I was the only male in the audience. It got me to thinking, as I departed afterward in the drizzling rain, that what “Everything You Need To Know About Abortion In One Hour Or Less” has to say isn’t just for females. We all need education and insight, and reminders to care without judgment.
            “Everything You Need To Know About Abortion In One Hour Or Less” will be presented through Jan. 28 at various locations. Go to the TuYo Theatre website for days, sites and times: tuyotheatre.org.

:Lauren King Thompson (left) and Deborah Gilmour Smyth in "The Trip to Bountiful." Photo by JT McMillan

            These days kindness is in very short supply.
            But it’s there in Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful,” which Lamb’s Players Theatre is staging for the first time in more than 30 years. The fearless and determined journey that the elderly Carrie Watts makes from the unhappy Houston home she lives in with her devoted son and self-absorbed daughter-in-law from to her roots in fictional Bountiful, Texas, is made easier – and more tender for her, and for the audience – by the assistance of a fellow passenger on the bus and by a small-town sheriff.
            Carrie is a woman really without guile, and though she resides in an idealized past of cotton fields and chirping birds and big, blue skies there’s no blaming her for that – the present, in the company of a domineering daughter-in-law and a kind but spineless son, is without comfort.
            Lamb’s Associate Artistic Director Deborah Gilmour Smyth portrayed that unsympathetic daughter in law, Jessie Mae, when the company produced “The Trip to Bountiful” for the first time in 1991 in Lamb’s’ pre-Coronado days. Then, as now, Foote’s 1953 classic enjoyed the subtle direction of Robert Smyth, Lamb’s’ artistic director.
            Gilmour Smyth continues to prove one of the San Diego theater community’s most affecting, intuitive and tireless actors. Just a few months after delivering such a performance as a woman descending into dementia in Backyard Renaissance’s “The Waverly Gallery” she brings to the Lamb’s stage a Carrie Watts such as Foote must have intended, a woman of grit and spirit aching for inner peace and for home. 
            The trick to producing “The Trip to Bountiful” as I see it is to avoid sentimentality. The combination of Gilmour Smyth’s nuanced performance and a decidedly more minimalist staging allows the quiet moments of the play (and there are many of them, mostly between Carrie and her son, beautifully played by Andrew Oswald, and between her and fellow bus passenger Thelma, a very good Lauren King Thompson) to sink in.
            The noise is generated, as written, by the domineering Jessie Mae Watts. Kelsey Venter generates plenty of that, but also the kind of nervous laughter that comes with encountering a character so wholly without understanding for spouse, or certainly for mother-in-law. Jessie Mae treats Carrie like a child whom she can bully.
            Lance Arthur Smith’s turn as a sheriff with a heart is brief but memorable, while Spencer Gerber makes the most out of an obliging ticket agent.
            The integrity of Foote’s play, so fully realized at Lamb’s, is its power to make us “see” Bountiful in all its faded beauty and desiccated dreams. When Gilmour Smyth’s Carrie looks to the rafters at the sound of her beloved birds we can believe they are treetops hovering over a town-gone-by in the Texas nowhere.
            “The Trip to Bountiful” runs through March 1 at Lamb’s Players Theatre in Coronado.

Faline England and James Sutorius in "Louisa Gillis."                                               Photo by Aaron Rumley

            Louisa Gillis is dead, by her own design, in Joanna McClelland Glass’ new play by the same name. But the enigmatic Louisa resides in every character onstage in this world premiere at North Coast Repertory Theatre.
            Celia (Faline England), her surviving daughter, is an alcoholic wounded deep inside by the neglect of Louisa, who pawned her off on a sister and who banished Celia’s father whom Louisa deemed guilty of “moral turpitude.”
            Celia’s own daughter Lucy (Caroline Renee) may be once removed from the darkness of Louisa, but she is now the child of a drunk, and there’s enough evidence psychological and societal to know what a curse that can be.
            Louisa’s banished spouse Steven (James Sutorius) moved on long before granddaughter Lucy was born, and though he’s enjoyed a 40-year second marriage to a woman of heart and substance (Denise Young, as Helga), his bitterness and bile about Wife No. 1 infuses much of his attitude as he nears the end of his life – and it is in no small part the cause of a nasty, broken relationship with Celia.
            This is melodrama. This is family dysfunction. This is, as director David Ellenstein described it in an interview I did with him for The San Diego Union-Tribune, “familial morass.”
            “Louisa Gillis” is North Coast Rep’s second go-round with a play by Glass, whose “Trying” was produced for streaming during the pandemic-necessitated shutdown of live theater. The playwright has worked closely with Ellenstein and his company in bringing this new work to the stage. Like so many world premieres it could use some paring here and there, and the absence of an intermission (not sure why) makes “Louisa Gillis” feel long when it really isn’t.
            As with North Coast Rep’s streaming version of “Trying,” Sutorius is at the forefront (though England gets the last bow after the play ends). His performance as an elderly man losing a grip is more reminiscent, however, of his outstanding turn in Florian Zeller’s “The Father,” which Ellenstein directed in its West Coast premiere in Solana Beach in 2018. That also marked Sutorius’ first performance at NC Rep.
            He creates an even richer character in “Louisa Gillis.” Steven may be tired and bitter and more and more betrayed by his declining physicality, but the longtime college professor and student of mankind retains the words of Shakespeare as if they were etched on his soul, enough humor to cut through the ever-tightening tensions of his old age, and undying affection for faithful Helga.
            Cranky as he is, Steven’s the kind of man of letters and musing that this college professor would like to have had as a grandpa. Sutorius brought that home to me.
            Structurally, “Louisa Gillis” is divided into scenes of confrontation: the whole family at the outset, then variously and not necessarily in this order Steven and Helga, Celia and Lucy, Lucy and Helga, Steven and Celia, etc. There’s rancor in most, tenderness in few.
            Once the fractured relationships have been established, the principal conflict of the play  is revealed: A letter written by Louisa and entrusted to her attorneys decrees that upon Steven’s death he is to be buried beside her and her family, Helga’s wishes be damned.
            It’s a stipulation that appalls everyone except Celia: She’s so ridden with guilt and resentment (and so “in love” with “Johnny,” her regular bottle of Johnny Walker) that she’s torn between being true to her mother’s request in spite of the pain that was caused to her, and being contrarian, especially when her insulting father is involved.
            I have a little trouble with the crux of the conflict: If Louisa charged Steven with moral turpitude and cast him away, why would a judge or jury in a theoretical “custody fight” over Steven’s ashes award them to the woman who scorned him when the other side was someone who had loved him and been his companion for four decades?
            Maybe I missed something.
            “Louisa Gillis” is set in a Connecticut haven for elders, which Steven hotly resents. He’s clinging to the New York City apartment where he and Helga shared their independence and their happier years. Making it worse is that because Celia inherited all the money left by her mother, she’s pulling the purse strings and it’s she who is responsible for her father (and Helga, whom she despises) living in a place where an unseen beefy doorman makes sure that Steven doesn’t wander off, or flee.
            If the script could use some massaging, the performances are solid. Sutorius rules every scene he’s in. England is tasked with being a slaphappy drunk more than a despairing, broke-down one, and her moments with her “Johnny” sometimes can feel a bit caricatured. There are quite a few laughs in “Louisa Gillis,” grim as its circumstances might be, but I’ve never found alcoholism humor very funny.
            Renee’s Lucy is the grown-up in the room much of the time – certainly so when it’s just she and her reeling mother. She’s got a nice stage presence.
            At first, Young has little to do as Helga tries to keep Steven from losing it with Celia, but as the story goes on she brings the manner of warmth and understanding and grit that Glass certainly intended for the character. She fittingly ends up being the conscience of the play.
            The literary quality of the script in part is what Ellenstein has said attracted him to “Louisa Gillis,” and it is indeed a story often told in the rich voice of someone who knows the words of Shakespeare and other great scribes.
            One suggestion for revision: Steven tells Helga, as he knows his death is coming, that he’d like to have a phone conversation with God. He even says he’d be doing it “on Monday.” We never hear the conversation.
            It’s one I’d like to hear, even if it was one-sided.
            “Louisa Gillis” runs through Feb. 8 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach.