What would you do if you found out that your spouse and your longtime best friend were having an affair? What if so happened that your spouse’s illicit lover was her own bff as well? These questions and more are posed and answered to terrifically entertaining effect in Peter Lefcourt’s Ménage À Quatre, the prolific L.A. playwright’s best new comedy since 2015’s Café Society.

 Not that cardiovascular surgeon Jeannie (Carly J. Casey) considers her extramarital canoodling with swimming pool contractor Reuben (Matthew Downs) an affair. (“This is casual sex a couple of times a month in a motel room,” she tells her hubby’s bff.)

Still, when a married woman’s mergers-and-acquisitions attorney husband (Jeremy S. Walker’s Gary) starts to wonder why his wife is heading off to a day in the O.R. dressed like Kim Kardashian, not to mention why she has suddenly gone and bought him a $450 cashmere sweater (and bought herself a pack of cigarettes in Tarzana when they live in Brentwood), it’s hardly any wonder that said spouse goes off and hires himself a private dick to put a tail on the Missus even as her lover’s penis sculptor wife (Sarah Wolter’s Meg) remains none the wiser…or at least so far.

Lefcourt’s spicy new comedy serves up ninety minutes of laughter that never feels sitcomish and drama that never feels tonally off since the characters he has created and the performances Ryan O’Connor (a couldn’t-be-better choice to direct) has elicited feel authentic no matter how outrageous their actions and reactions may be or how outraged and betrayed or guilty and defiant they may feel.

Yes, Lefcourt kind of gives away the gist of his play’s last thirty minutes in the title, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be surprises ahead, and though it’s probably impossible for any writer to come up with a totally satisfying ending to all the messiness that’s led up to it, Lefcourt comes pretty darned close.

Redheaded sizzler Casey gives Jeannie just the right all-business/all-pleasure drive and edge opposite Downs’s (at least initially) more-than-willing-to-cheat Reuben, the actor’s teddy bear charm a definite plus for a character we ought not to but can’t help but like.

Walker is on fire too as the justifiably suspicious and ultimately outraged Gary, and statuesque stunner Wolter gives Meg the same kind of screwball comedy zing that made her Baker’s Wife in last year’s Into the Woods such a standout.

Last but most definitely not least, Daniel Montgomery steals scenes right and left as a) naughty narrator Walter, who sees all, knows all, and (most importantly for us) tells all, b) Darren, the sassy gay model posing for Meg’s latest lower torso sculpture and c) no-nonsense gumshoe Ezra Pound (no relation to the poet).

Not only does Ménage À Quatre benefit from Lefcourt’s proven playwriting gifts, O’Connor’s directorial panache, and its quintet of talented thespians, no writer could ask for as downright sensational a production design as his latest has been given.

Scenic designer Brad Bentz, projection designer Brian Christopher Russell, and lighting designer Gavan Wyrick have joined talents to create a nearly cinematic setting for scenes that take us in an instant from stylish Westside living rooms to an artist’s studio jam-packed with sculpted phalli to aboard Gary’s sailboat to assorted hotel rooms to a men’s restroom to a private golf course, all of these changes achieved in little more than the blink of an eye.

Additional design kudos are shared by sound designer Jesse Mandapat, properties designer Jenine MacDonald, and costume designer Mylette Nora, though the decision to have all four characters wear basically the same four outfits until about the last half-hour of the show is one I just don’t get.

Zachariah Payne is intimacy and fight director. (Ouch-worthy jaw punch!) RachaelMaye Aronoff is production stage manager.

Ménage À Quatre is produced by Misha Riley. Terri Hanauer and Lefcourt are executive producers. Casting is by Michael Donovan, CSA and Richie Ferris, CSA. David Elzer is publicist.

I’ve been a Peter Lefcourt fan since reading his groundbreakingly ahead-of-its-time novel The Dreyfuss Affair in the early 1990s and I’ve relished his playwriting gifts since 2009’s La Ronde De Lunch.

Audiences of any age or sexual orientation or relationship status can expect to be as thoroughly taken as I was by his latest, the devilishly daring and delightful Ménage À Quatre.

The Davidson/Valentini Theatre, L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, The Village at Ed Gould Plaza, 1125 N. McCadden Place, Los Angeles.
www.Onstage411.com/Quatre

–Steven Stanley
July 26, 2025
Photos: Frank Ishman

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

Tags: Davidson/Valentini Theatre, Los Angeles LGBT Center's Village at Ed Gould Plaza, Los Angeles Theater Review, Peter Lefcourt