The Road Theatre Company’s three-shows-in-a-row return season goes from good to better to best of all with the World Premiere of Arthur Holden’s Beloved, a suspense-filled, twist-packed stunner that will leave you blown-away and breathless.

Sam Anderson and Taylor Gilbert star as Montreal couple Stephen and Dorothy Krieger, who’ve been summoned to he principal’s office of the school where their sixteen-year-old son has been detained for reasons yet to be explained.

And the couple, who became first-and-only-time-parents when Dorothy was already in her mid-forties, seem no likelier to be provided with an explanation for the summons given guidance counselor Miriam Jacobs’ (Cherish Monique Duke) reluctance to give them any kind of answer.

Finally, however, the concerned Kriegers manage to get through Miriam’s hemming and hawing to learn that their beloved son has been caught downloading internet images that would get an adult branded a sex offender for life.

The fact that these pictures involve only members of the same sex comes as no surprise to David’s mother, who hasn’t needed her son to come out to her in order to surmise his sexual orientation, perhaps even before David himself did.

No, what shocks her and her husband alike, and what neither refuses to believe, is the particular nature of what David has downloaded. David may well be gay, but not this. Not this.

Making matters even worse for the Kriegers is the likelihood that their private lives are about to scrutinized and dissected by the authorities.

Has there been anything in David’s home life that might have led to this? Has there been abuse? Has anyone in David’s immediate family ever hit him? And if so, was it a spanking, a slap, or an open-fisted punch?

Holden subtitles Beloved “a play in three waiting rooms,” subsequent sequences taking us to a children’s hospital and then to a Montreal courthouse, the reasons behind each change of scene making Beloved an absolute must-see.

Playwright Holden takes his deliberate time in peeling away the onion that is the Krieger home, each new revelation more shocking than the one before, and by keeping David offstage throughout, he allows us to conjure up the angry, wounded, rebellious, achingly vulnerable teen who has suffered the consequences of being the exact opposite of the son his father dreamed of.

Director Cameron Watson follows the emotional rollercoaster ride that was Rogue Machine’s On The Other Hand We’re Happy with an even more powerful three-hander, eliciting five absolutely superb performances from three gifted actors.

Anderson and Gilbert have been brilliant together before, in 2010’s Madagascar, five years later in The Other Place, and then again the following year in The Play About The Baby, so it should come as no surprise that this dream pairing once again delivers the dramatic goods, and then some.

Anderson dazzles and devastates as a man confronted with the possible destruction of a family, a marriage, a father-son relationship, and a business he has spent his life building.

Gilbert is both riveting and heartbreaking as a wife and mother for whom a family crisis brings out a strength and resolve hitherto dormant, and Duke vanishes into three very different women, her stammering guidance counselor followed by a caring hospital psychiatrist and a no-nonsense criminal prosecutor, each of them pitch-perfect.

The set Brian Graves has designed for all three return-of-the-Road shows works best of all here, serving as the backdrop for three distinctly rendered waiting rooms, a design aided enormously by Nick Santiago’s scene-setting projection collages, Derrick McDaniel’s striking lighting, Marc Antonio Pritchett’s drama/ambient-enhancing sound design, and Michèle Young’s just-right costumes.

Beloved is produced by Danna Hyams. Darryl Johnson is consulting producer. Maurie Gonzalez is stage manager. David Elzer is publicist.

Road Theatre fans couldn’t have asked for a finer return season than The Play You Want, Bright Half Life, and Beloved. Most gratifyingly of all, they have saved the best for last.

The Road Theatre, NoHo Senior Arts Colony, 10747 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood.
www.RoadTheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
May 27, 2022
Photos: Michèle Young

Tags: Arthur Holden, Los Angeles Theater Review, The Road Theatre Company