The stunts, the puppetry, and the multimedia effects are indeed spectacular, but Lisa Sanaye Dring and Rogue Artists Ensemble’s Happy Fall: A Queer Stunt Spectacular ends up biting off more than it can chew in combining all of the above with the doomed love story of two gay stuntmen, one proudly out, one deeply closeted, in an industry where being heterosexual is a must.

40something bearded blond hunk Clay (David Ellard) has been playing it straight for so many years, it’s become a matter of course for him to put on a macho facade.

Ponytailed Japanese-American muscle twink Felix (Kurt Kanazawa), on the other hand, may be new to the stunt game, but the Gen Zer has likely never even entertained the thought of hiding in the closet.

Can this hot-for-each-other but disastrously mismatched couple find happiness in the most homophobic of settings?

It’s a tale as old as the movie industry, though unlike your standard-issue play, movie, or TV show, Happy Fall: A Queer Stunt Spectacular recounts this tale of star-crossed lovers in the most ingenious and inventive if not entirely successful of ways.

Amir Levi is the evening’s ubiquitous Host, welcoming the audience to “The Unipersonal Parabount Lisney Studios Stuntman Spectacular” and its cast of “seasoned stunt performers, stunt performers slash actors, actors who do stunts, actor/models who write stunts on their resume who also deliver with Instacart.”

Chief among them is aging golden boy Clay, whose latest (female) fight scene partner’s ineptitude means finding a replacement asap, and with the right wig and costume, Felix just might have what it takes to make the combat sequence work.

It does, the young up-and-comer gets hired, and before you know it, sexual sparks are in the air.

The trouble is (if one of Happy Fall’s cleverest puppets-on-video sequences is to be believed), only straight, opposite-sex romcom couples are destined for happy endings (think Harry and Sally) while gay relationships (think Ennis and Jack) are doomed to disaster and maybe even death.

No matter that things have changed on the big and small screens since Brokeback Mountain’s 2005 release (thank you Fire Island, Love, Simon, and Red, White, & Royal Blue), you’d think we were still back twenty years ago, though perhaps where the stunt industry is concerned, we still are.

Happy Fall: A Queer Stunt Spectacular is at its best when it goes all-out multimedia, as it does when instructing audiences on The History Of Stunts, or when its multitalented cast of actors/stunt performers (completed by Carlos R Chavez, Gabriel Croom, Kelsey Kato, Tiana Randall-Quant, and Miki Yamashiro) are dazzling us with gosh-that-must-hurt feats of derring-do.

Not only this, but as in Rogue Artists Ensemble’s Wood Boy Dog Fish (also directed by the flairful Sean Cawelti), Jack Pullman’s puppets are bona fide dazzlers, though having a life-sized Clay puppet stand in for the real Clay (as the straight exterior he presents to the world?) is one of several instances where Happy Fall gets a bit too artsy for my tastes.

Ellard and Kanazawa are both terrific (and terrifically fit), though I found it hard to sympathize with the mismatched couple given that not only is Clay deeply closeted but his penchant for rough sex is the last thing Felix wants or needs, or at least not all the time.

Levi is his usual dynamic, flamboyant presence throughout, though a little of the evening’s increasingly outrageous Host goes a long, long way.

Technical and design elements earn their own cheers for a production that combines the talents of composer Adrien Prevost, scenic designers Cawelti and Keith Mitchell, video designer Cawelti, choreographer Cody Brunelle-Potter, costume designer Andrew Jordan, lighting designer Amber Shift, sound designer M. Glenn Schuster, property designer Lily Bartenstein, and puppet miniature designer Adrian Rose Leonard to stunning effect.

Greg Ballora is puppet fabricator. Eric Elias is pyrotechnician. Sam Lopez is associate video designer and programmer. Morgan Rebane is associate puppet designer and fabricator. Celina Lee Surniak is fight coordinator and intimacy coordinator.

Happy Fall: A Queer Stunt Spectacular is produced by Zach Davidson. Lucas Brahme, Maia Luer, and Jerry Zou are swings. Deena Tovar is stage manager and Ashley Weaver and Grace Wilkerson are assistant stage managers. Lucy Pollak is publicist.

If I were rating Happy Fall: A Queer Stunt Spectacular on its action sequences, stunts, puppetry, and videography alone, it would easily rank among the year’s best productions. If only I had been more captivated and convinced by the overwrought love story it tells and the way it chooses to tell it.

Renberg Theatre, Los Angeles LGBT Center, The Village at Ed Gould Plaza, 1125 N McCadden Place, Hollywood.
www.rogueartists.org

–Steven Stanley
August 29, 2024
Photos: Bryce Darlington

Tags: Los Angeles LGBT Center's Village at Ed Gould Plaza, Los Angeles Theater Review, Renberg Theatre, Rogue Artists Ensemble