If your idea of a good time is spending eighty minutes with a bunch of downright disagreeable individuals doing some downright despicable deeds, you might want to check out West Adams, Skylight Theatre’s self-described “dark comedy about race, class, and bouncy houses.” Others might want to stick to their own neighborhood.

To begin with, it’s more than a bit of a misnomer to call Penelope Lowder’s World Premiere play a comedy, dark or otherwise, so lacking in humor is it that after its first few admittedly amusing minutes, I could probably have counted the number of times I laughed (or heard a mostly deadly silent audience laugh) on the fingers of one hand, and still had a finger or two left over.

Whether this is the result of Lowder’s heavy-handed script or its heavy-handed execution, I’d be hard pressed to determine.

Suffice it to say that the two young married couples who’ve just moved into L.A.’s historic West Adams district have from the get-go nary a likable trait among them.

Indeed, I can’t recall another play whose characters rubbed me the wrong way from our first encounter, and that initial wrong-way rubbing was only the beginning.

All-American Michael Hills (Clayton Ferris), his Chinese-American wife Julie (Jenny Soo), his Peruvian immigrant business partner Edward Apaza (Andrés M. Bagg), and Edward’s pregnant American-born wife Sarah (Allison Blaize) have arrived in the until recently almost entirely minority-populated neighborhood East of the 10 freeway with an attitude of white (or at least non-black) privilege unlikely to earn them audience sympathy.

And these four already abrasive characters become positively insufferable when a super-rich black family moves in across the street and begins casually using their wealth to take charge of the annual block party Michael and Julie and Edward and Sarah have had their self-serving hearts set on organizing, an event that Michael had hoped would boost the sales of the inflatable bouncy house business he runs with Edward.

Suffice it to say that if these four have already proven themselves pretty darned unbearable up till now, just wait till they start behaving like the ugliest of entitled Americans, with the possible exception of the one amongst them who wasn’t born here.

Fine plays have doubtlessly already been written about the racism that lies beneath the surface of the most outwardly liberal-minded of Americans, but West Adams is not that play.

Perhaps if playwright Lowder or director Michael A. Shepperd had gotten us to like these characters before having them reveal their baser natures, West Adams might have worked.

Perhaps if West Adams were indeed the dark comedy it claims to be, I might have left the Skylight theater entertained and enlightened in addition to being provoked to think and talk.

As is, West Adams’ dynamic, hard-working cast does the best they can with the material they’ve been given, and Soo delivers a monolog that’s really quite touching.

Blaize is less fortunate, given a character turn that is as hideous as it is beyond belief, nor is it ever explained how green card holder Edward speaks the unaccented English of a native.

As is often the case with new plays that go amiss, West Adams’ one saving grace is its sensational production design: scenic designer Stephen Gifford and properties designer Michael O’Hara’s pitch-perfect replication of a gentrified American Craftsman home, strikingly lit by Donny Jackson, with additional design kudos shared by costumer Mylette Nora (snaps to the red satin bomber jackets that open the show), David Kuranami for some striking black-and-white animated projections, Jesse Mandapat for his surround-sound mix of traffic noise and opening/closing doors, and Michael Teoil for some tension-heightening musical underscoring.

West Adams is produced by Gary Grossman and Michael Kearns. Amy Pelch is associate producer.

Andrew Brian Carter is assistant director. Jen Albert is fight coordinator. Casting is by Raul Clayton Staggs.

West Adams may have been awarded more than a few rave reviews, but on a purely objective note, I’ve rarely heard such brief, muted applause at the end of a production where one might expect to hear cheers. Perhaps audience members’ lack of enthusiasm had to do with not wanting to reward West Adams’ repugnant characters with too much love. For this reviewer, at least, the reason was far more simple.

Skylight Theatre, 1816 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles.
www.skylighttheatrecompany.com

–Steven Stanley
February 23, 2020
Photos: Ed Krieger

Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Penelope Lowder, Skylight Theatre Company