What’s a Nice Girl to do when she finds herself still living at home with her mother and rapidly approaching the age when singledom turns into spinsterhood? That’s the dilemma Jo faces in Melissa Ross’s tangy slice-of-1980s-life now captivating audiences on Rogue Machine’s uber-intimate Henry Murray Stage.

Not that Jo (Anaïs Fairweather) had any intention of leading the life the cards have dealt her when she graduated from her suburban Boston high school twenty years ago and headed off to none other than Radcliffe College on an academic scholarship no less.

But eight months into her freshman year, Dad got sick, her mother Francine (Susan Peahl) needed Jo’s help taking care of him, and then after he died, Ma still needed her help paying the bills and taking care of the house, and then Jo fell behind in her classes, and she lost her scholarship, and…

Well, shit as they say happens, and time passes, first days, then months, then years, and Ma keeps refusing to see the doctor, not because she’s afraid of bad news but because she’s worried he’ll tell her she’s perfectly fine which will mean she no longer can exert a hold over her thirty-seven-year-old daughter, and Jo keeps on keeping on, the only bright spots in her day being breakroom time with her sassy, big-haired coworker Sherry (Bailey Humiston) and the brief moments she gets to spend with hunky local butcher Donny (Jeff Lorch) deciding between lamb chops and veal.

Imagine then Jo’s delight when, having finally been persuaded by Sherry to hang out at the neighborhood singles bar, who should she run into but Donny, who’s the next best thing to single (i.e., separated from his wife), and better still invites her to their upcoming 20th high school reunion as his date?

Could it be that Jo’s life is at long last changing for the better?

Watching Ross’s 2015 off-Broadway gem feels a bit like discovering a cinematic treasure from the ‘80s you’d somehow missed when it played your local cinema and are tickled pink to happen upon forty years later.

And though on paper at least, Nicer Girl might seem an offbeat offering for a company best known for edgier fare, the characters Ross has created have enough darker edges that it ultimately becomes clear that no, Nice Girl isn’t that odd a choice after all.

 Director Ann Bronston keeps things grounded in the not-so-sunny reality of these characters go-nowhere lives while making sure that we never lose sight of the hopes and dreams that keep each of them alive and kicking, and she earns bonus points for some of the swiftest and most seamless scene changes I’ve seen in a good long while.

And what remarkable performances she has elicited from her pitch-perfect cast!

Not only does Fairweather manage to transform Jo from plain Jane to someone who can turn the world on simply by flashing her radiant smile, her richly-textured performance is a pitch-perfect mix of darkness and light, of despair and hope.

Peahl’s Francine seems at first to be nothing more than a mother whose mastery of the passive-aggressive has kept her daughter tied to her apron strings for decades, but as Peahl’s powerhouse performance reveals, she’s much more than that.

 Humiston’s loud-and-proud Sherry and Lorch’s too-good-to-be-true Donny are equally multilayered, and just wait until Sherry sees who Jo is dating for Humiston and Lorch to reveal sides to their characters we didn’t suspect were there.

 Scenic designer Barbara Kallir has managed to transform a matchbox stage into multiple suburban locales with the swiveling of a set piece or the addition of a bench and her expert lighting helps set each scene as does Christopher Moscatiello’s ’80s-infused sound design.

Last but not least, Christine Cover Ferro’s costumes recall the 1980s in all their did-we-really-wear-that glory and dialect coach Lauren Lovett has the cast sounding like working class Bostonians.

Rachel Frost is assistant director. Jenny Flack is scenic and mural painter. Grant Gerrard is technical director. Rachel Ann Manheimer is production stage manager and Ramon Valdez and Rich Wong are stage managers.

Nice Girl is produced by Lexi Sloan, Athena Saxon, and Guillermo Cienfuegos. Chisom Okoye is associate producer. Casting is by Victoria Hoffman. Judith Borne is publicist.

Melissa Ross’s Nice Girl had me hooked from its engaging start to a final fadeout that manages quite miraculously to be neither trite nor a cop-out. I couldn’t have loved it more.

Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles.
www.roguemachinetheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
June 22, 2025
Photos: Jacques Lorch

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Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Melissa Ross, Rogue Machine Theatre