No one mines more laughs from dysfunction than Justin Tanner, and if you don’t believe me, check out the latest from the playwright who gave the world Voice Lessons, Teen Girl, Oklahomo!, Space Therapy and more, and whose latest, El Niño, proves the perfect Rogue Machine follow-up to the darkness and depravity of Ruth Fowler’s bled for the household truth.

 Not that life is all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows chez the Highland Park Harrisons, especially since daughter Colleen (Maile Flanagan), nearing 50 and still single, is back under her parents’ roof and planning to stick around for the next four, five, six months, nine on the outside, or at least until she’s recovered from piriformis syndrome in her lower back (a result of driving for Uber) and plantar fasciitis in her feet (caused by cheap Payless walking shoes), and if her parents Harvey (Nick Ullett) and June (Danielle Kennedy) think she’s making all this up, well people have committed suicide from the former condition and Mitt Romney has suffered from the latter, so there.

Not only that, but after having had over twenty (in her mom’s words) “bullshit books about space people” published, among them paperback originals with titles like Parallel Worlds and The Sex Plague, Colleen is suffering from writer’s block and may not ever write another word again.

 Meanwhile, the Harrisons’ divorced, slightly younger daughter Andrea (Melissa Denton) is back from a trip to Morocco (“That place is dysentery on a plate.”) bearing a gift from Target (a paper shredder for their credit card statements so they won’t be victims of identity theft like she was while she was away) and news that’s sure to make her folks’ day.

Andrea has met an attractive veterinarian named Todd (Jonathan Palmer), and though she hasn’t yet introduced him to her 10-year-old on-the-spectrum handful of a son Davey, the good news is that Todd wants to meet her folks, though perhaps it won’t be be such good news once they’ve figured out he’s a misogynistic bully.

 Completing El Niño’s cast of characters is next-door neighbor Kevin (Joe Keyes), who turns out to be not only Colleen’s biggest fan but a fellow high school dropout no less. (Unfortunately for Colleen, Kevin is also her parents’ biggest nemesis thanks to the multiple ailments that keep his 18-year-old cat Larry yowling at all hours of the day and night, though Dr. Todd, who specializes in putting past-their-prime animals down, seems more than willing to help with that.)

 If it’s not already clear, playwright Tanner has a way with characters not usually given their moment in the spotlight, and if the Harrisons and their daughters’ gentleman callers seem low on redeeming features, they are undeniably human and surprisingly capable of touching an audience’s hearts even if their main function is the tickling of funny bones.

 Director Lisa James proves herself as adept at comedic lunacy with El Niño as Smoke and Punk Rock revealed her gift for dramatic edge, ensuring performances grounded in reality even as she lets the laughs fly fast and furious from a dream cast of Tanner regulars and newbees.

 Not only are Denton, Flanagan, Kennedy, Keyes, Palmer, and Ullett all simply divine, they get to strut their stuff on scenic designer John Iavovelli’s set, a Craftsman living room so pitch-perfect you’d swear they trucked it over from Highland Park.

Brian Gale’s lighting, Halei Parker’s costumes, and Christopher Moscatiello’s sound design are equally masterful, with special snaps to Iacovelli, Gale, and Moscatiello for some particularly realistic rain and wind effects and to fight director Matthew Glave for some not-so-sisterly rough-and-tumble.

 El Niño is produced by John Perrin Flynn and French Stewart. Jennifer Palumbo is stage manager, David A. Mauer is technical director, and Amanda Bierbauer is production manager. Casting is by Victoria Hoffman.

Sidelined for a number of years by his own bouts with Colleen’s ills, Justin Tanner is at long last back on our L.A. stages. Not only that but, as El Niño makes hilariously clear, he is back with a vengeance.

Rogue Machine @ The MET Theatre, 1089 N. Oxford Ave., Hollywood.
www.roguemachinetheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
March 5, 2018
Photos: John Perrin Flynn

Tags: Justin Tanner, Los Angeles Theater Review, Rogue Machine Theatre