Charismatic, multitalented L.A. musical theater performer Ryan O’Connor recalls the most challenging year of his life in story and song in his terrifically entertaining musical memoir Vote, Pray, Love, now playing Sundays and Mondays at the Celebration.

 The last place recently gay-divorced recovering alcoholic O’Connor would ever have imagined finding himself one late November 2016 night was on an abandoned street in Pontiac, Michigan, but that’s where he found himself the night a certain “orange faced monster” got himself elected president of the United States.

 Vote, Pray, Love is O’Connor’s musical memoir of events leading up to that moment, aided and abetted by vocal superstars Amber Liekhus, Lindsay Heather Pearce, and Katherine Tokarz as fellow Hillary Clinton Field Office campaigners, and Alex Nee as the sexiest Trouble ever to ignite the Celebration Theater stage.

 Liekhus doubles as Oprah Winfrey, reminiscing with Ryan about he went from being a contestant on her fledgling network’s Your OWN Show to finding himself a hundred-fifty-pound overweight alcoholic told by his movie-star-handsome soon-to-be-ex husband that even minus those extra pounds (thanks to weight-loss surgery) and conquering the bottle (thanks to AA), he needed to be less of a “dreamer” and more of a “doer.”

 And so O’Connor signed up to campaign for Hillary in what would turn out to be one of  Election 2016’s most critical counties working alongside fellow organizers Nora (Tokarz), Olivia (Pearce), and Liekus (Victoria), each of whom would touch his life in the most unexpected of ways.

Also along for the ride are fantasy versions of both Reba McIntyre (Tokarz) and Elizabeth Taylor (Pearce) and songs made famous by such pop divas as Whitney Houston, Ani DeFranco, Lily Allen, Lorde, and Kate Bush, performed by as vocally gifted a cast as anyone could wish for and backed sensationally by musical director Andy Arena on keyboards, assistant director Emily Rosenfield on guitar, Blake Estrada on bass, and Greg Sadler on drums.

 Equal parts charming, self-deprecating, and inspiring (and with a voice to match his co-stars’ stellar pipes), O’Connor commands attention and affection from the get-go under Marissa Jaret Winokur’s assured direction with Tokarz’s choreography adding pizzazz throughout.

Technical director Matthew Brian Denman makes the whole shebang look terrific on a cleverly modified Priscilla Queen Of The Desert Set.

Vote, Pray, Love is produced for Celebration Theatre by Tom DeTrinis, Christopher Maikish, and Jay Marcus.

 If any bonus production merits more than its currently scheduled four performances, it is Vote, Pray, Love. Ryan O’Connor may have gone through the most traumatic year of his life back in 2016, but as that little voice in his head kept telling him way back then, it makes for one hell of a show.

Celebration Theatre at Lex Theatre, 6760 Lexington Ave., Hollywood.
www.celebrationtheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
April 8, 2018
Photos: Brian Carpender

Tags: Celebration Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review, Ryan O'Connor