What would you do if your four-year-old son’s love for all things Cinderella represented not just an affection for the fairytale heroine but something considerably more profound? This is the dilemma facing a 30something husband and wife in Daniel Pearle’s engrossing family dramedy A Kid Like Jake, a hot-button-issue IAMA Theatre Company West Coast Premiere.

A kid like Jake could hardly ask for more loving, devoted parents than therapist Greg (Tim Peper) and stay-at-home mom Alex (Sarah Utterback) nor a more nurturing learning environment than the one provided by preschool principal Judy (Sharon Lawrence).

Not that Jake’s Daddy and Mommy are anything approaching wealthy, which is why if their preschooler is to start kindergarten in a pricey private institution, he’ll be needing a scholarship, which is why Alex has picked up a copy of “Preparing Your Child For Gifted Testing” to her husband’s amusement and dismay.

There’s also the matter of the application essay Alex is currently in the midst of composing, one which asks her to describe how someone would identify Jake were they to see him in a room full of children playing, no mention of physical characteristics allowed.

Though hardly the easiest of writing prompts, Alex thinks she’s come up with a fairly decent essay, that is until Judy puts in her two cents’ worth.

Might it not be a good idea when describing Jake to a diversity-minded private school to “talk a little about his gender-expansive play?” Jake did, after all, choose the role of princess when he and his classroom gal pals were creating their own fairy tale the other day.

An audience member need not be a brain scientist to see what Judy is implying.

Greg and Alex aren’t nearly so perspicacious where Jake is concerned, or perhaps they are simply refusing to admit that he might rather be a she.

What A Kid Like Jake does make perfectly, painfully clear is how resistant even the most educated, progressive, well-intentioned, and loving of parents can be to what’s so clearly in front of their eyes, even when Jake begins acting out in ways that may dash any scholarship hopes Greg and Alex may have.

Trans issues were only beginning to enter our national consciousness when A Kid Like Jake had as auspicious a World Premiere as any playwright fresh out of grad school could wish for (Lincoln Center for goodness’ sake), and if Pearle’s play was ahead of its time back in 2013, it couldn’t be more of the moment than it is six years later.

Unlike its 2018 movie adaptation that debuted at Sundance no less, Pearle’s stage original (smartly revised from its NYC run to make Jake’s parents less financially equipped to buy their way into a private school) keeps its title character resolutely out of view, allowing us to imagine the child we hear so much about and letting us come to our own conclusions.

Under Jennifer Chambers’ astute direction, Peper and Utterback reveal both comedic flair (Alex’s “even the one with Brandy” scores a particularly amusing bulls-eye) and fiery dramatic chops as Greg and Alex find themselves increasingly at loggerheads, Lawrence is equally terrific as a preschool principal who finds herself the unwitting target when one of them goes ballistic, and Olivia Liang makes for the loveliest and warmest of obstetric nurses.

By making the astute though not necessarily obvious decision to direct A Kid Like Jake on a thrust stage, Chambers ensures rapid scene changes from apartment to office to waiting room to restaurant on DeAnne Millais’s quickly morphing set appointed with Heath Harper’s abundance of school-and-home-related props, and Ginevra Lombardo’s lighting, Melissa Trn’s costumes, and Peter Bayne’s sound design and original music are every bit as effective.

A Kid Like Jake is produced by Lexi Sloan. Che Landon is associate producer. Margaux Susi is associate director. Lucy Houlihan is stage manager and Lila Schmitz is assistant stage manager. Eduardo Fernandez-Baumann is technical director and Lacey Anzelc is scenic painter. Kimberly Colburn is dramaturg.

Casting is by Jordan Bass, CSA. Robyn S. Clark, Bryan Langlitz, Courtney Peck, and Susan Ziegler are understudies.

Following last spring’s head-bangingly theatrical Mama Metal, A Kid Like Jake showcases IAMA Theatre Company in more traditional but no less edgy mode. It had me riveted from start to finish.

Carrie Hamilton Theatre at the Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave, Pasadena.
www.iamatheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
October 5, 2018
Photos: Dean Chechvala

Tags: Daniel Pearle, IAMA Theatre Company, Los Angeles Theater Review