The American Dream ends up little more than an urban legend for the two star-crossed protagonists of Roger Q. Mason’s compelling, heart-rending two-hander Hide & Hide, a sensationally acted, directed, and designed Skylight Theater World Premiere.

The year is 1980, the place is the city of broken dreams better known as Los Angeles, and the dream-seekers in question are 30something Constanza (Amielynn Abellera), freshly arrived from the Philippines, and 18-year-old Texan Billy (Ben Larson), recently escaped from the Christian conversion camp his parents sent him to in order to pray away the gay.

 Strangers in a strange land these two dream-seekers may be, but at least Constanza has a place to stay, or at least she will once she’s forked over to her Tia Edita every single one of the five-hundred dollars she’s brought with her.

Billy, unfortunately, isn’t so lucky, but given his striking good looks and his buff physique, it won’t be long before men start paying him big bucks for a fuck, or at least those not bent on gay-bashing, or worse.

And since the only way these two complete strangers could possibly cross paths in a city of 3,000,000 is through a twist of fate, it’s fateful indeed that they have both set their sights on the late-night hot spot known far and wide as Studio One.

It is there that Constanza eyes “the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen” and Billy spots “the most stunning girl I’ve ever seen,” and something more than a mere friendship is born.

Further connecting these two outcasts’ lives is Filipino attorney Ricky (“A mix of Ricardo Montalban, and Bruce Lee, and Rudolph Valentino”), who hires Constanza for her secretarial skills while setting Billy on the path to monetizing his physical attributes (from $50 for an in-car blowjob to sky-high for full-blown stay-the-night man-on-man sex, that is unless the Texas lad ends up bruised and bloodied and left for dead by the wrong kind of stranger.

 Reminiscent at times of the late-1960s shocker-with-a-heart Midnight Cowboy, Hide & Hide is also a memory play in the tradition of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie blended with hints of Williams’ signature mix of smoldering, societally taboo urges and wishful dreams not come to fruition.

It’s also a play whose power on the printed page pales in comparison to the full force of Hide & Hide brought to life on stage, particularly when you’ve got a director as imaginative and gifted as Jessica Hanna, a pair of actors as passionate and indefatigable as L.A. stage treasure Abellera and charismatic recent USC grad Larson, and a team of designers at the peak of their creative gifts.

Abellera in particular gets the physical and emotional workout of her life as she morphs from the optimistic-turned-jaded Constanza into both her Filipina Tito and Tia and the shrewd-bordering-on-treacherous businessman that is Ricky Enril III.

And dynamic newcomer Larson proves more than up to the challenges of bringing the emotionally scarred, endlessly beleaguered Billy to heartbreaking life, giving as good as he gets opposite force-of-nature Abellera.

Not only does Hide & Hide prove a directorial and acting showcase par excellence, it’s as dazzlingly designed as any intimate production you’ll see this year.

 Brandon Baruch’s spectacular lighting brings Christopher Scott Murillo’s appropriately stark gray set (the same one that works to brighter, breezier effect in the concurrently running The Winter’s Tale) to dramatic, constantly mood-changing life, and Amelia Anello’s mood-enhancing ambient soundscape and musical underscoring only adds to Hide & Hide’s engrossing impact.

 Add to that Wendell C. Carmichael’s just-right costumes and Nicole Bernardini’s 1980s props (including a nostalgic, yards-long phone cord) and you’ve got a production that any playwright would kill for.

Hide & Hide is produced by Gary Grossman and Armando Huipe. Letitia Chang is stage manager. Giovanni Ortega is dialect coach. Celina Lee Surniak is intimacy and fight director. Dylan Southard and Gaven D. Trinidad are dramaturgs. Casting is by Victoria Hoffman.

 Gripping from the moment Constanza starts running in place as if her life depended on it to its Greek-tragedy-worthy denouement, Roger Q. Mason’s Hide & Hide may not be the feel-good escapist fare many are craving in these turbulent times, but I guarantee you will feel something. I for one was gut-punched, and I mean that in the best sort of way.

Skylight Theatre, 1816 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles. Through June 29. See website for detailed performance schedule.
www.skylighttheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
May 16, 2025
Photos: Jason Williams

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Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Roger Q. Mason, Skylight Theatre Company