Powerhouse acting honed during Cry It Out’s three-week run at Little Fish Theatre made me glad I got to experience the final performance of Molly Smith Metzler’s funny, compelling, deeply moving dramedy about modern-day motherhood and marriage.

 Stay-at-home nursing moms like Jessie Jensen-Gelb (Kyla Schoer) and Lina Bustamante (Samantha Barrios) rarely get the center-stage spotlight they are given in Metzler’s 2017 four-hander, and indeed, under ordinary circumstances, the two women might never have met, let alone become friends.

 Jessie grew up comfortably in the Midwest, graduated law school, married into money, and had been working for nine years as a Manhattan corporate lawyer when an emergency C-section made her realize that mothering her now 12-week-old daughter was all she wanted to do into the foreseeable future.

Single-mom Lina, on the other hand, is blue-collar “Lawng Guyland” all the way, has no more than a semester or two of community college under her belt, and lives with her son’s Italian-American baby daddy under his alcoholic mother’s rent-controlled roof just across from Jessie and her husband’s gentrified duplex on Long Island’s North Shore.

And the twain would never have made each other’s acquaintance had an adult-companionship-starved Jessie not approached Lina in the neighborhood Stop ‘n’ Shop and invited her over for some backyard bonding over coffee, baby monitors allowing each to keep watch over her mostly sleeping infant.

Then, one day, the two women find their daily kaffeeklatsch interrupted by the unexpected arrival of their uphill, upscale neighbor Mitchell (Brian O’Sullivan) with a request to make, not long after which his wife Adrienne (Rena Carter), herself the mother of an infant child, shows up with a bone to pick and Cry It Out becomes even richer and more stereotype-defying for their arrival on the scene.

Indeed, much of the pleasure of experiencing Metzger’s play is discovering how surprising its quartet of characters are and how unpredictable its plot twists prove to be, that and the opportunities it affords a quartet of 30something actors the chance to shine, and under Mirai’s direction, shine they do.

 Barrios is a force of nature as the salty-tongued but tender-hearted Lina, and never more so than when financial realities place more than just mother-son bonding in jeopardy.

Schoer matches her costar every step of the way as the smart, sensitive, empathic Jessie, a woman for whom motherhood has meant giving up much of the backbone she had in her previous life as a high-powered lawyer.

O’Sullivan reveals dramatic chops to match the comedic ones he showed off in Little Fish’s On Farce Day of Christmas as Mitchell defies preconceived notions of parenthood and parenting, and a stunning Carter’s two punch-packing scenes as Adrienne give us a woman whose ice-queen exterior may be only skin deep.

Still, much as I’m delighted that Little Fish has found a temporary home after being booted from their uniquely charming San Pedro digs last year, Cry It Out does suffer from the staging and design challenges posed by its new Redondo Beach venue.

The converted space’s lighting plot only allows actors to be lit from above, meaning that it’s often only the upper halves of faces that we get to see clearly, and anytime an actor steps to the outer limits of the in-the-round playing area, they are in shadow.

It doesn’t help either that designer David Zahacewski keeps the lighting down low throughout most of the play, something that may befit Cry It Out’s late-winter/early-spring time frame but does neither the actors nor the audience any favors.

Not only that, but given the production’s arena staging, where you sit may affect your full appreciation of Metzler’s play. (From my assigned seat, there were a number of instances where for quite a while all I got to see was Lina’s or Mitchell’s back blocking Jessie from view.)

Michael Mullen, on the other hand, gets a big thumbs-up for his just-right costumes as do the songs sound designer Doug Mattingly has chosen for us to hear at opportune moments, with Catherine Pitt’s scenic design (mostly items of furniture and playground equipment) and props completing the mix.

Cry It Out is produced by Tara Donovan. Lisa Brehove Roy is stage manager and Grace Wilkerson is dramaturg.

Though I can’t help wishing I could have seen Cry It Out in Little Fish’s former home, the chance to re-experience Molly Smith Metzler’s beautiful play performed by a cast as fine as this one ended up overcoming design and staging obstacles, and regardless of where they are, it’s great to have Little Fish back.

Little Fish Theatre, 510 N. Prospect Ave., Redondo Beach.
www.LittleFishTheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
November 30, 2025
Photos: Christopher Burke

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

Tags: Little Fish Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review, Molly Smith Metzler