The Play’s the Thing

Brittany Menjivar watches absurd characters blur the lines between “persona” and “actual man” in two new one-act plays in East Hollywood.

By Brittany MenjivarNovember 20, 2024

LOST ANGELS: A NIGHT OF TRAGICOMIC ONE-ACT PLAYS, The Yard Theater, Los Angeles, November 8, 2024.

Theater kids rejoice—plays are in right now. A couple months back, Siena Foster-Soltis and Lily Lady sold out performance after performance of their metatextual thriller Session at Gattopardo gallery; the sceney New Theater Hollywood has attracted the likes of Stephanie LaCava and Kaia Gerber (who recently shifted the discourse around herself from “nepo baby” to “patron of the arts” by founding her own book club). Amid this wave, actor and playwright Kevin Grossman is one of the curators bringing scripts to the stage most consistently, hosting evenings of one-acts at venues around town via his Cool Cuts series. The series’ latest, Lost Angels—comprising two “tragicomic” pieces, one penned by Grossman and the other by Matt McDonald—regaled audiences at the Yard Theater with satirical portraits of the heaven and hell that is Hollywood living. Hyperlocal humor abounded as the characters flubbed their way through both personal and professional interactions—but beneath all the bits, a decidedly unironic undercurrent of hope emerged.

In my interview with Peter Vack earlier this year, the actor-cum-director noted that “you can get salon theater pieces up quickly enough that they can comment on the current moment,” hence their popularity among uber-online crowds of artists. These words echoed in my mind as I watched the first play of the night, Grossman’s own Melody Sh*tstein, which was directed by his brother Brian. Ben, its blustering antihero, is a desperate romantic whose idea of wooing women involves rolling up to his neighborhood Crossroads and trying to prove his wokeness to the cashier in hopes that it’ll mark him as an ideal suitor. When—shocker, shocker—this strategy fails, he turns to the internet: namely, R0nni3 Tha G0d, a pickup artist who dispenses offensive advice through Patreon (behind a paywall, of course). In R0nni3’s delightfully bizarre vertical videos, projected over the stage, the PUA seems to pop off the screen with his tacky outfits and booming slogans—so it makes sense that he should roll up to Ben IRL, promising to teach him his ways. (Well, kind of: His uncle R0dn3y, played by Grossman himself, shows up, claiming that R0nni3 is more of a persona than an actual man.) R0nni3 and R0dn3y, in all their bombastic, misogynistic glory, illuminate the ridiculousness of the manosphere via caricature; Ben’s character is a more nuanced “nice guy,” eager for genuine connection but funneled down a dark path by the algorithm. Hence, it’s satisfying that the play ends on an ambiguous note: while Ben doesn’t “get the girl,” he does learn how to hold a sincere conversation devoid of buzzwords or negging. The play felt particularly pertinent post-election, given the stream of sexist remarks spewed by influencers such as Andrew Tate in its wake.

Buddy & Dolly, McDonald’s contribution, deals with a more timeless theme—the pursuit of big-screen fame in Tinseltown. Buddy, much like the J. D. Salinger character of the same name, is a Very Serious Writer—and fittingly, the play has a Salingerian idea of the meaning inherent in everyday encounters. As Buddy goes about his day, he “runs into” a pedestrian who is later revealed to be an actor trying to scam him for money, meets with the big-shot agent who holds the power to make his dreams come true, and receives potentially life-changing wisdom from his dentist—but the most interesting part of his journey is his neighbor Dolly, the aspiring romance writer who offers to serve as his chauffeur while his car is in the shop. Dolly often frustrates Buddy, but she’s a joy for the audience to watch: between McDonald’s charmingly naturalistic dialogue and actress Rebecca O’Brien’s lively performance, Dolly was the star of the show. A surreal, nitrous-fueled fantasy sequence illustrating the extent of Buddy’s existential angst elevated the show from clever farce to something stranger, more stirring.

It makes sense that both Grossman’s and McDonald’s plays should veer into the absurd. They say that all the world’s a stage, but Los Angeles feels especially so—and Lost Angels understands this.

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Photo by contributor.

LARB Short Takes live event reviews are published in partnership with the nonprofit Online Journalism Project and the Independent Review Crew.