KING LIZ


Broadway star Sabrina Sloan sizzles as a powerhouse A-list sports agent named Liz Rico, and newcomer Evan Morris Reiser electrifies as a high school grad with NBA superstar potential, in Fernanda Coppel’s off-Broadway dramedy King Liz, now getting a largely absorbing Los Angeles Premiere at the Geffen Playhouse.

It’s been twenty-two years since then recent Yale grad began her rise from the Brooklyn projects to the upper echelons of the agent biz, and if she plays her cards right, she might soon find herself replacing about-to-retire top gun Mr. Candy (Ray Abruzzo) as the agency’s first female CEO and its first CEO of color.

There’s only one hitch. If the board is to be convinced that Liz is up to the job, she first needs to sign one more potential big-money-maker, and Candy has precisely the right candidate in mind.

He’s half-black, half-Hispanic high school phenom Freddie Luna, a gifted athlete whose only minus is a teenage run-in with the law that had him doing time in juvie, that and an ego every bit the size of Liz’s.

Not that Ms. Rico is all that thrilled about taking on a newbie, particularly one with a record, but the possibility of reaching the pinnacle of a white-male-dominated industry is too tempting to pass up.

Now all she has to do is sell herself to the much sought-after young man, though given Liz’s considerable powers of persuasion, it doesn’t take long for her to have him signing on the dotted line and getting signed almost immediately with the New York Knicks.

If only there wasn’t the pesky matter of Freddie’s youthful incarceration for a crime that left one of its victims minus an eye and another in a wheelchair for life, and the even peskier matter of the aggrieved victims’ consistent presence at Freddie’s games, and the protests they’ve organized to get him fired.

Still, with Freddie scoring the tie-breaking final basket in an early-season Knicks win, past transgressions might easily be forgiven and forgotten were it not for a post-game press conference that quickly goes south when hot-tempered Freddie does the unthinkable.

Coppel’s two-plus-hour play could probably use a trim, and the ending she’s given it, while unexpectedly touching, leaves too many questions unanswered.

Still, I was rarely less than engaged, thanks in large part to the stellar performances elicited by director Jesca Prudencio.

Sloan burns up the stage as a woman who’s proven her mettle in a man’s world by going from the projects of Red Hook and a childhood diet of mayonnaise sandwiches and sugar water to counting Steven Spielberg and Oprah as her Upper West Side neighbors and dining at Manhattan’s priciest eateries.

Brooklyn-born Reiser more than holds his own opposite Sloan as a young man who may well be his worst enemy, and King Liz is at its most compelling when its title character and her young protégé share the stage.

Abruzzo is terrific too as Liz’s mentor, and Michelle Ortiz provides entertaining comic-relief MVP as Liz’s overworked and underpaid assistant Gabby, who’d like nothing better than to step into her boss’s six-inch heels.

Oscar Best does solid work as Freddie’s coach/Liz’s part-time lover, and Nancy Linari has a devilish cameo as a superstar TV interviewer who’s promised to go easy on Freddie. (As if.)

Justin Humphres’ set design would work a lot better if it didn’t require so many stagehand-assisted scene changes, but his ESPN-style video projections are a series of eye-catching winners, and costume designer Devario D. Simmons, lighting designer Rebecca Bonebrake, and sound designer Melanie Chen Cole join creative forces quite effectively indeed, with fight director Steve Rankin choreographing one realistic onstage tussle.

Lizzie Thompson is production stage manager. Phyllis Schuringa, CSA, is casting director.

  With characters to care about and lives to become invested in, King Liz may not be a slam dunk, but at the very least it’s a pretty nifty layup shot. And you don’t have to be a basketball fan to find yourself taken by Liz Rico and her newest b-ball star.

Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood.
www.geffenplayhouse.com

–Steven Stanley
July 22, 2022
Photos: Jeff Lorch

 

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