Christian Prentice dazzles as a state-of-the-art robot about to star as Torvald in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House opposite TV diva Ivy Khan’s Nora in Peter Ritt’s High Maintenance, an initially captivating Road Theatre World Premiere that fails to live up to expectations in its romance-derailing, credibility-straining final scenes.

Audiences can be excused for assuming that the GQ cover-ready young man who introduces himself to us as Alan Steele, head of robotics at Capstone Technologies, is indeed the person he’s claiming to be, that is until Alan himself (Kris Frost) shows up to let us know he’s being impersonated by none other than “Thesbot One, the world’s first fully functional automated performer.”

The real Alan then goes on to inform those in attendance at this year’s Flash Forward Techo Expo that Roger the Robot will soon be making his acting debut at Chicago’s Lakeshore Playhouse opposite none other than Laura Miller, best known as Captain Zara Pyre of the hit sci-fi TV show Starship Ravenica.

As to why the five-time Emmy nominee now finds herself doing regional theater, any TMZ viewer will tell you that it’s because the TV star, frustrated at being paid far less than her male counterpart, tossed a lighted cigarette in his direction and ever so accidentally burned down half the Warner lot.

Now persona non grata in Hollywood, Laura has arrived at Lakeshore Playhouse in hopes of redemption, her longtime gay best friend Gus Ziegler (Merrick McCartha) tagging along for moral support.

Perhaps not surprisingly given the fact that Roger is not only making his stage debut but pretty much his human debut as well, initial rehearsals don’t go quite as smoothly as Lakeshore artistic director Vera Osborne (Amy Tolsky) has hoped.

Not only is Roger shocked to learn that his leading lady isn’t yet off book, no matter that it’s their very first rehearsal, he has no idea why Laura’s Nora is only pretending to eat a macaroon. (“Why don’t you have them with you?”) And his attempt to “playfully grab Nora’s ear” ends up requiring stage manager Samm (Alexis Ingram) to go off in search of a first aid kit.

Despite this rather rocky start, however, it doesn’t take long for Roger to begin mastering this thing called acting.

Not only that, but the more human he becomes, the more genuine his “feelings” seem to be, the harder Laura finds it to see her costar as something other than human, and the more invested I as an audience member became in discovering whether a living, breathing woman and an artificially intelligent mechanical man might possibly make “interspecies” romance work.

Playwright Ritt, has other things in mind however when he introduces us to Thesbot Prime (Tommy Dickie) about seventy-five minutes into his ninety-minute play, an arrival that takes High Maintenance in an entirely new (and for this reviewer at least) entirely unwanted direction, one I didn’t buy into either as a premise or in the improbable ways several characters react to it.

It’s a shame because I really did love High Maintenance’s first hour-and-fifteen-minutes, finding myself particularly taken by Prentice’s delightful, appealing, revelatory star turn as the increasingly humanized Roger.

As for the always fabulous Khan, not only does she give Hollywood divas a run for their money, the romantic chemistry between male robot and female human is as palpable as it gets.

McCartha’s endlessly supportive Gus, Tolsky’s delightfully daffy Vera, Frost’s confident, smooth-talking Alan, Ingram’s easily excitable Samm, and Dickie’s goofy, not quite human Thesbot Prime all do topnotch work under Stan Zimmerman’s lively direction.

Jenna Bergstraesser’s costumes and Scottie Nevil’s props are first-rate, and David B. Marling’s accomplished sound design features assorted robotic effects and some believable audience voices.

High Maintenance’s production design as a whole, however, pales in comparison to anything I’ve seen at the Road since the company’s post-pandemic return, a combination of Brian Graves’s barebones set and the way Derrick McDaniel’s otherwise effective lighting design tends to wash out Ben Rock’s slideshow projections.

Chase Cargill, Dirk Etchison, Charles Farrell, Laura Gardner, Kalinda Gray, Amir Levi, Tally McCormack are alternate cast members.

High Maintenance is produced by Danna Hyams. Destinee Stewart is assistant director. Graves is fight choreographer. Maurie Gonzalez is production stage manager and Bex Taylor-Klaus is assistant stage manager. Darryl Johnson is production coordinator. David Elzer is publicist.

There’s probably nothing more disappointing for me as a reviewer than a production that starts out promising and then derails. Unfortunately, in the case of High Maintenance, my initial High Expectations ended up largely unmet.

The Road Theatre, NoHo Senior Arts Colony, 10747 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Through May 19. See website for detailed performance schedule.
www.RoadTheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
April 14, 2024
Photos: Peggy McCartha

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Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Peter Ritt, The Road Theatre Company