Provocative, edge-of-your-seat, and ripped from today’s headlines, Lee Blessing’s For The Loyal makes its compelling West Coast debut at Sixty-Six Theater Co.

Fledgling college football coach Toby’s (Torrey Drake) pregnant wife Mia (Hilty Bowen) can scarcely believe her ears when her distraught young husband blurts out the most shocking of revelations.

He’s just come from witnessing a sex act (or at least evidence of one) between 40something Coach Carlson (Mark Youngs) and an underage youth (Danny Martha as The Boy).

Worse still as far as Mia is concerned is learning that Head Coach Hale (Eddie Alfano) has ordered Toby to say and do nothing that might threaten the school’s athletic program.

What Hale is willing to do is demand from the already gossiped-about Carlson a quiet resignation that can be chalked up to family matters or health concerns or a desire to spend more time with disadvantaged kids, in other words anything to make the serial child molester somebody else’s problem.

What neither Toby or Hale have reckoned with is a shocking turn of events about to transform For The Loyal turns into a surrealistic nightmare.

Inspired by the 2011 child sex abuse scandal that saw Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky convicted on forty-five counts of child sexual abuse taking place over a fifteen-year period, Blessing’s 2015 dramatization puts a personal face on those whose lives a sexual predator has touched, each of them with something distinct to say:

“You can’t change someone like that. All you can do is make him someone else’s problem.”

“He gave me money. I gave him sex. Sometimes I liked it.”

“Nobody saw him actually touch the boy. End of story.”

“We almost never tell, not until it stops.”

“The kid’s got a police record that should belong to an adult. No jury would convict on his word.”

“I chose to shut my eyes to the truth rather than put my family in jeopardy.”

For The Loyal’s central conceit–that all of this is happening inside Mia’s head–isn’t entirely successful. (If it were a nightmare of her own making, how could she possibly know what’s going on inside an underage victim’s head?)

The dramatic sparks Blessing ignites, however, are undeniable, and with director Paul Rush eliciting top-notch performances from all concerned, in particular a stunning star turn from recent USC grad Bowen in the most demanding of roles, one that takes Mia from rage to disbelief to tears and back to rage, audiences can expect not only to be riveted, shocked, and dismayed, but also to have their belief systems challenged in the process.

Production designer Elizabeth Smith’s football field set may not allow for the transformations from reality to dream and back indicated in Blessing’s script, but it’s a clever design choice that reminds us constantly of the milieu in which For The Loyal unfolds.

Lighting designer Paul Timmel and costume designer Kristina V score high marks as well. Trevor Reece’s minimalist sound design, on the other hand, misses the chance to add dramatic punctuation to scene changes that take place in dead silence.

With a final twist as unexpected as the one I’ve done my darnedest to keep under my hat, For The Loyal proves a winner for playwright Lee Blessing, for Sixty-Six Theater Co., and for audiences who catch its gripping West Coast Premiere.

Marilyn Monroe Theatre, 7936 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood.
www.sixtysixtheater.com

–Steven Stanley
November 21, 2019

Tags: Lee Blessing, Los Angeles Theater Review, Sixty-Six Theater Co.