Playwright Marja-Lewis Ryan is back, and reunited with her One In The Chamber star Heidi Sulzman in The Best Boarding House In Delaware, not only the year’s most deliciously dark comedy but one that marks the return to the stage of the exquisite Leigh Taylor-Young.

Sulzman vanishes into the role of dowdy, dorky 70ish Deedee Harringer, owner-operator/cook/occasional maid of the senior care facility that Taylor-Young’s Fiona Glick has called home for some time now, though that might change should Fiona’s niece Shannon O’Neil (Michelle Gardner) secure her aunt’s release and welcome her to her seaside home on Slaughter Beach.

Doing so may be more easily said that done, however, given Deedee’s suspicions that Shannon might not be who she claims to be. (“In all the time I’ve known her, she never mentioned she had a niece,” remarks Deedee, not to mention that “she’s always on about her cunt sister,” so how is it that Shannon even knows that Fiona lives here?)

Not only that, but if Deedee’s sole remaining  tenant leaves for the Delaware shore, how on earth will her boarding house win first prize in a potentially game-changing local newspaper contest?

Perhaps the easiest thing to do would simply be to _____.

You’ll have to fill in that blank yourself because what happens next is so shockingly unexpected, to even hint at it would be a crime, as it would be for you to google the name Dorothea Puente, on whose “chilling true story” The Best Boarding House In Delaware is based, or at least not until after you’ve seen the show.

I’ve been a Marja-Lewis Ryan fan since her 2014 play One In The Chamber focused an up-close-and-personal lens on gun violence and its effect on one all-American family, but that dramatic gut-puncher (and its powerful follow-ups A Good Family and Bugaboo & The Silent One) in no way prepared me for the darkly funny comedic chops she shows off in her latest World Premiere.

And if leading lady Sulzman destroyed me a dozen years ago in One In The Chamber, she’s as delectably diabolical in The Best Boarding House as she was devastated and devastating in OITC because believe me, Deedee is not a woman to be tangled with. (Just ask Gardner’s deliciously dry Shannon or an equally terrific Jessie Warner’s hopelessly clueless Bunny McMacken).

As for the divine Taylor-Young, not only is she every bit as lovely as she was when teenaged me watched her play Rachel on Peyton Place, she’s also funny as all get-out as Deedee’s one-and-only (and possibly last) boarding house guest.

Not only is Ryan an accomplished playwright (in addition to making it big in Hollywood showrunning The L Word: Generation Q), she once again disproves the adage that writers should not direct their own work, eliciting pitch-perfect performances from her stellar quartet while assembling one of the absolute finest production design teams in town.

 Scenic designer Michael Fitzgerald stints not an iota in giving The Best Boarding House In Delaware the most minutely detailed of cluttered, dilapidated interiors while lighting designer Diana Herrera and sound designer Cricket S. Myers up the suspense and the shocks every step of the way.

 Add to that Gwen M. Schaeffer’s character-perfect costumes (Dominique Dawson is costume consultant), Cassidy Noblette’s seamlessly integrated choreographed bits, and one ghoulish life-sized surprise I dare not describe, and you’ve got a small-stage design marvel that looks like a million bucks.

The Best Boarding House In Delaware is presented by Chris Bender, Joe DiSalvo, and Edward N. Ryan in association with Theatre of NOTE and features stunts by Buddy Sosthand, wigs by Florence “Flo” Witherspoon, makeup by Rebecca Cotton. Norm Johnson, Ann Swenson, and Elise Robson are associate producers. Heather Romanowski is stage manager.

 If I’ve been cagey about what Marja-Lewis Ryan has up her sleeve in The Best Boarding House In Delaware, it’s with good reason. Like Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho way back in 1960, I guarantee you’ll be shocked and delighted to death by this black comedy banger of a play.

Electric Lodge, 1416 Electric Avenue, Venice. Through March 29. Thursdays and Fridays at 8:00. Saturdays and Sundays at 3:00 and 7:00.
www.electriclodge.org

–Steven Stanley
March 8, 2026
Photos: Gus Frank

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

Tags: Electric Lodge, Los Angeles Theater Review, Marja-Lewis Ryan