Sometimes it pays to stick around for Act Two, which is why I urge you to resist the temptation to exit Little Fish Theatre after Righteous Among Us’s talky, overpadded first act because if you do, you’ll be richly rewarded when Amy Tofte’s tale of Holocaust heroism both real and invented takes dramatic, compelling flight.

Tofte’s script introduces us to Mila Stevens (Dominique Fatu), a young African American whose volunteer work as a civil rights museum researcher has her interviewing the descendants of the 342 Jewish children smuggled out of a Polish hospital on Christmas Eve 1940 thanks to the courageous efforts of hospital workers who put their lives at risk to prevent these children from being sent to concentration camps and on to their certain deaths.

First to be interviewed is 30something Natalie Carlton (Austin Highsmith Garces), whose grandparents were among the hospital employees who, having gotten the older children down the back stairs to the basement, then proceeded to lower the younger ones down a dumb-waiter-type laundry chute to be transported to safety, hidden amongst the day’s wash.

Mila’s second interviewee is 60ish Ruthie Bergen (Rachel Levy), whose late mother’s life was saved by children’s ward worker Anneta Wolan and her husband in an act of unselfish courage that Ruthie’s family continues to celebrate and honor to this day.

If only Righteous Among Us didn’t take a full hour to convey this basic information, much of it taken up by fourth-wall-breaking monologs (Mila’s) that could easily be trimmed to a fraction of their length as could her subsequent interviews with Natalie and Mila.

Not only that, but because there’s basically nothing pre-intermission but people talking about the past (a case of telling rather than showing) Righteous Among Us’s first act might as well be a radio play given how little there is to hold our attention other than words, words, and more words.

Imagine my surprise then when dramatic fireworks explode almost immediately post-intermission when Natalie’s and then Ruthie’s lifelong illusions get shattered, allowing all three actresses to dazzle as I remained glued to my seat.

Clocking in at two-and-a-half-hours, Keep Righteous Among risks audience members not sticking around for Act Two.

Trim it down to 90 minutes (keeping most of Act Two intact) and Tofte’s play could not only be a keeper, it wouldn’t take nearly so long for the cast to prove their dramatic mettle under Sabra Williams’s direction.

Fatu disarms the audience (if not Natalie) with Mila’s eager charm and likability, and the deeper the researcher digs into past secrets and lies, the deeper and more affecting Fatu’s performance becomes.

Levy’s prim and proper Ruthie catches fire too as she comes face to face with the truth, and the need to rethink the meaning of courage under pressure.

Most remarkable of all is Garces’s star turn as a woman who comes across, at least at first, as rather a bit of an airhead with a tendency to jump to hasty conclusions, all the more reason for Natalie’s Act Two explosion to devastate in a performance that must surely rank among Garces’s finest.

Production design-wise, Little Fish Theatre has made the smart decision to switch from arena to thrust staging, a reconfiguration of space that allows a far more effective lighting design (by David Zahacewski) than the recent Cry It Out did.

Maya Channer’s set design limits itself to a few pieces of office furniture backed by an exploding star’s worth of randomly arranged letters (a concept that went over my head), but top marks are earned by costume designer Aja Morris-Smiley (just-right outfits for all three women), properties designer Minoise Jain for her myriad documents and photos (I don’t envy the post-performance cleanup), and Damian Areaga for his expert sound design.

Aileen Komoshita is stage manager. Chels Morgan is cultural competency specialist.

Given that Righteous Among Us has almost certainly undergone numerous script revisions over the past half-dozen years, it’s probably too much for me to expect the kind of radical cuts and rethinking I’ve suggested here.

That being said, though it takes too long to get there, once Righteous Among Us finally hits its stride, it proves quite powerful indeed.

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

–Steven Stanley
February 8, 2026
Photos: Miguel Elliot

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Tags: Amy Tofte, Little Fish Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review