Playwright Justin Tanner was a mainstay of the Los Angeles 99-seat theatre scene in the 1990s. He was the resident playwright at The Cast theatre where productions of his plays—Bitter Women, Teen Girl, Coyote Woman, Pot Mom-all premiered. His play Zombie Attack, written with Andy Daley, played there for ten years. Thanks to founder Ted Schmitt, The Cast had a reputation for nurturing playwrights and presenting World Premiere productions. After his death, Diana Gibson took over the theatre and the mentoring. Tanner was her prize protégé although an LA Weekly cover story on Tanner labeled him “The Prisoner of El Centro Avenue”. Tanner’s association with Gibson and Gibson’s with The Cast ended in 1999.
Ryan Brophy, Jenny O’Hara and Zachary Grant (all photos by Jeff Lorch)
Tanner has written a scathingly funny play, Little Theatre, that is being given its World Premiere by Rouge Machine Theatre at Hollywood’s Matrix Theatre. Roman a clef is usually a term for novels about real live events and people overlaid with a façade of fiction. Harold Robbins wrote of Howard Hughes in The Carpetbaggers and Jacqueline Susann wrote of Judy Garland and others in Valley of the Dolls for example. Tanner has written a roman a clef about his life at The Cast, changing the names but not really protecting the guilty.
Zachary Grant and Ryan Brophy
The 25-year-old James (Zachary Grant) arrives at the El Centro Theatre, owing 160 hours of community service as a result of his third DUI arrest. He is not greeted warmly by the pot-smoking, beer-guzzling gorgon Monica (Jenny O’Hara) who runs the theatre with an iron fist. Danny (Ryan Brophy), the theatre’s handyman and resident set builder, is friendlier. Soon the threesome settle into a routine that lasts a decade. When James reveals his budding playwright dreams, Monica leaps upon the chance to become his mentor and get a steady stream of new work to keep those City Arts Funds flowing into her bank account.
Zachary Grant, Jenny O’Hara and Ryan Brophy
For those of us who covered the LA theatre scene in the ‘90s, the play is sort of a This Is Your Life flashback as familiar names of fellow theatre critics and theatre makers of the era are brought up, mostly to hilarious effect. The fall-down-and-roll-on-the-floor moment for me came with a scene at the 1995 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards show involving actress Janet Leigh, which I, as producer, inadvertently caused.
Lisa James has skillfully directed her trio of actors through the high drama and low comedy of the script. John Iacovelli designed the lived-in chaos of the theatre’s cramped office as well as the stately grandeur of Monica’s home. Grant brings a deer-in-the-headlights innocence to James that slowly builds into a more assured person of worth. Brophy has the laid-back charm of a slumming rich boy. But it is O’Hara who inhabits every fiber of the Gibson character, fire-breathing her way around the stage in a tour-de-force comic masterpiece portrait of a woman who lived life full out. Little Theatre is worth seeing for its time capsule look at the 1990s little theatre scene in LA. And if you were there, it is a rollicking reminder of the fun times that were to be had then.
www.rougemachinetheatre.org