Smalltown America circa WWII has rarely been brought to life as charmingly and powerfully, or staged as imaginatively as it is in Actors Co-op’s captivating World Premiere adaptation of William Saroyan’s The Human Comedy.

With a world war raging oceans away from the peaceful San Joaquin Valley, Saroyan’s masterpiece recounts the coming-of-age tale of 14½-year-old Homer Macauley (Brendan Shannon), a toe-headed lad who divides his time between his home in Ithica (a stand-in for Saroyan’s native Fresno), the classroom, track-and-field events at school, and the telegraph office where he works part-time delivering messages sent from afar.

Like the hero of Homer’s epic poem, Homer Macauley’s own Odyssey unfolds as a series of vignettes involving over two-dozen supporting characters, each of whom takes part in a spate of life lessons that will transform our teenage protagonist from callow youth to a considerably wiser young adult.

Though Hollywood filmed The Human Comedy in the same year it was published (and Saroyan won a Best Story Oscar), it’s taken a whopping eighty years for The Human Comedy to get its first non-musical stage adaptation, no easy task despite the novel’s relatively brevity, but it’s one that Thom Babbes aces equally as script writer and director.

And though Babbes’s stage play clocks in at two hours and forty-five minutes (including intermission), you’d hardly know it, so integral is each and every scene in Homer Macauley’s journey and so magical is the adapter’s inspired direction, evident from an opening sequence that has a freight train puffing and roaring though Ithica as cast members’ rhythmic foot stomps simulate the clacking of wheels on tracks.

Later, Babbes stages a hurdles race that has Homer soaring above the competition, not the only instance in which our young hero (and others around him) will defy gravity to wow-inspiring effect.

Shannon delivers the year’s most engaging breakout performance in a role that has him not only running the gamut of human emotions but displaying seemingly inexhaustible physical stamina as Homer takes fall after fall while convincing us that the 20something actor is barely into his teens.

Marc Elmer displays abundant paternal warmth as Homer’s deceased dad Matthew, who serves as The Human Comedy’s all-seeing, all-knowing narrator; Co-op treasure Bruce Ladd makes for the wisest and most loveable of alcoholics as telegraph operator Willie Grogan; and Finn Martinsen is an absolute charmer as 6-year-old Ulysses Macauley.

Everyone else in the cast gets to show off versatility chops in multiple roles each, most notably Mitchell Lam Hau as a salt-of-the-earth older brother and a snooty rich kid; Eva Abramian as a teenage sister, an eleven-old-old boy, and a lady of the evening in desperate straits; Tricia Cruz as a very wise schoolmarm and a señora about to have her life destroyed; and Tiago Santos as a soldier without a home or family to call his own and (in the evening’s most devastating supporting turn) as a young man driven to do the unthinkable.

Also terrific are Adrian Alexander Gamez and Jessie Atijie Oriabure, who double amusingly as war-bound GIs and 15-year-old schoolboys; Kendall Lloyd as a brutish soldier and a compassionate telegraph office manager; Rachael Maye Aronoff as three very different girlfriends; Jessica Woehler as a loving mother and a principled principal; and Ben Kientz as a hissable coach and an equally hissable sporting goods store owner.

Scenic designer Tim Farmer’s revolving set makes impressive use of a half dozen or so moveable doors that do much more than simply open and close, with lighting expert Martha Carter, projection design whiz Nicholas Santiago, and properties pro Emmett Lee Merritt sharing production design kudos of their own.

Though skirt lengths often drop too far below knee-length to replicate fabric-saving WWII women’s wear, Shon LeBlanc’s period costumes are nostalgia-evoking gems as are Judi Lewin’s early-1940s-style hair, wig, and makeup designs.

Sound designer David B. Marling provides multiple impressive effects, Cooper Babbes’ music design gives the production a cinematic underscoring, and Grace Babbes and Blake Thiessen’s swing choreography impresses when the partying gets wild.

The Human Comedy is produced by Crystal Yvonne Jackson. Linda Kerns is vocal coach. Kassy Menke is stage manager and Merritt is assistant stage manager. Nora Feldman is publicist. Jack Sanchez understudies the role of Ulysses.

Actors Co-op could not have programmed a more perfect play to open its 2023 season, or one as likely to appeal to the theater company’s Christian subscriber base as it is to playgoers of a more secular bent.

Sweet without being saccharine, wholesome without being squeaky clean, and every bit as entertaining as it is inspirational, The Human Comedy is Actors Co-op at its top-drawer best.

Actors Co-op, 1760 N. Gower St., Hollywood.
www.actorsco-op.org

–Steven Stanley
March 10, 2023
Photos: Larry Sandez

Tags: Actors Co-op, Los Angeles Theater Review, Thom Babbes, William Saroyan